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MODERN SPIRITISM 



MODERN SPIRITISM 



A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF ITS 
PHENOMENA, CHARACTER, AND 
TEACHING, IN THE LIGHT OF THE 
KNOWN FACTS 



BY 

J. GODFREY RAUPERT 



SECOND EDITION 



ST. LOUIS, MO., & FREIBURG (BADEN) 

Published by B. Herder 

1909 

London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co. 



vv>\ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Recerved 

FEB | 1909 

Copyriirnt tntry 

W.3M^B °\ 

VlhSS oL XXc, No. 

copy a. 



Copyright, 1909, by Joseph Gummersbach, 



Becktold 

Printing and Book Mfg. Oo. 

ST. LOUTS, mo., U, S. A. 



PREFACE 

THE contents of this work will be found to 
more than justify its publication. 

The modern spiritistic movement, so strongly 
supported by recent scientific utterances, is increas- 
ingly affecting all classes and conditions of society, 
and is beginning to undermine the religious belief 
and convictions of thousands of serious-minded but 
not very accurately informed persons. The basis 
of this movement is the claim that the spirits of the 
dead are habitually communicating with us through 
the agency of sensitives, and that the disclosures 
which they are making are of an authoritative char- 
acter, and have a deeply important bearing upon 
our life and our religious beliefs. 

A systematic study of the subject, extended over 
a long period of years and carried on under ex- 
ceptionally favourable circumstances, has thor- 
oughly convinced the author that this popular and 
widely accepted view of the matter is a mistaken 
one, and that the modern spiritistic theory is un- 
tenable. 

Information of a deeply interesting and sug- 
gestive character, which has quite recently come 

v 



vi PREFACE 

into his possession, has gone to still further con- 
firm and strengthen this conviction, and has been the 
immediate cause of his preparing the present work. 
The author earnestly commends the facts set forth 
in this volume, supported as they are by such in- 
controvertible and overwhelming testimony, to the 
serious attention of all fair-minded and unpreju- 
diced inquirers. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. The Evidence i 

II. The Phenomena 25 

III. The Sensitive 62 

IV. The Intelligence or Intelligences 86 

V. The Spiritistic Theory 115 

VI. The Spiritistic Creed and Philosophy . . . 214 



MODERN SPIRITISM 



THE EVIDENCE 

IN really well-informed circles there is no longer 
any doubt that in the presence of certain pecul- 
iarly constituted individuals, and under conditions 
hereafter to be described, a series of abnormal phe- 
nomena can be induced which cannot be accounted 
for by science and by the known laws of nature, 
and that many of these phenomena are objective in 
character and are directed by extraneous intelli- 
gence or intelligences. 

The patient and prolonged research of men of 
note, many of whom are well-known experimenters 
in other fields of scientific inquiry, has recently 
yielded a large and unexpected amount of evidence, 
the value and significance of which is increased 
and strengthened by the consideration that many 
of them entered upon the inquiry with a pro- 
nouncedly sceptical attitude of mind, if not with the 
distinct desire to< disprove, if possible, the occurrence 
of these phenomena. So abundant and spontaneous, 
indeed, has been the testimony that, as the late 
Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge observed 



2 THE EVIDENCE 

some years ago, " the facts must either be admitted 
to be such as they are, or the possibility of certify- 
ing facts by human testimony must be given up." 

It is not here proposed to present a record of the 
circumstances under which the phenomena in ques- 
tion were first observed, nor to trace the origin of 
the modern movements of thought which, in the 
course of time, have come to be constructed upon 
them. Such information may easily be gathered 
from some of the popular works on the history and 
progress of Modern Spiritism and Occultism which 
liave, from time to time, issued from the Press. 
Testimony is simply borne to the fact that the first 
impulse which, here in England, was given to the 
systematic and scientific study of the subject was 
due to individual, unscientific, and sometimes quite 
unknown observers, who, in spite of much obloquy, 
and of the scornful indifference of orthodox science, 
continued their investigations and persisted in main- 
taining the objective and demonstrable character of 
many of the phenomena. And if science now, in 
the persons of those of its prominent men whom 
the ever-increasing amount and force of evidence 
has impelled to investigate the subject, and whose 
patient and painstaking labours have led to certain 
undeniable and very generally accepted results, 
takes up a positive and affirmative attitude, it should 
not be forgotten that that attitude was taken up and 
persistently defended by humble observers long be- 



THE EVIDENCE 3 

fore a single scientific man could be induced to 
study the subject, and before the present Society 
for Psychical Research existed. 

" The belief of the uneducated and unscientific 
world," in fact, as Professor Alfred Russel Wal- 
lace so justly observes, " rested on a broad basis 
of alleged facts which the scientific world scouted 
and scoffed at as absurd and impossible. But they 
are now discovering . . . that the alleged 
facts, one after another, prove to be real facts, and, 
strange to say, with little or no exaggeration, since 
almost every one of them, though implying ab- 
normal powers in human beings, or the agency of 
a spirit world around us, has been strictly paralleled 
in the present day and has been subjected to the 
close scrutiny of the scientific and sceptical with 
little or no modification of their essential nature." 1 

Or, as the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, speaking of 
the phenomena of mesmerism and of the scientific 
attitude respecting them, said in his presidential 
address, delivered before the Society for Psychical 
Research in 1894: — 

" If you take the opinion of men of science 
generally, you will be driven to the conclusion that 
they either denied facts which they ought to have 
seen were true, or that they thrust them aside with- 

1 Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, 1896. 



4 THE EVIDENCE 

out condescending to consider them worthy of se- 
rious investigation. ... I think the time has 
now come when it is desirable, in their own in- 
terests and in our interests, that the leaders of scien- 
tific thought in this country and elsewhere should 
recognise that there are well-attested facts which, 
though they do not easily fit into the framework 
of the sciences, or of organised experience as they 
conceive it, yet require investigation and explana- 
tion, which it is the bounden duty of science, if not 
itself to investigate, at all events to assist us in in- 
vestigating." 

While it is then by no means maintained that 
intellectual or scientific distinction is necessarily a 
guarantee of judicial fairness or of the power of 
accurately weighing and estimating evidence, it is 
nevertheless fully recognised that it is to the con- 
clusions of the trained and accredited scientific mind 
that the larger proportion of thinking persons are 
apt to attach most weight. And it is for this reason 
that it is chiefly the scientific evidence which it is 
proposed to adduce here with a view to demonstrat- 
ing that, after prolonged and painstaking research, 
in this and other countries, the conventional attitude 
respecting the phenomena under consideration has 
been abandoned, and that the best science of the 
day has practically pronounced in their favour. It 
is felt, moreover, that such evidence cannot fail to 



THE EVIDENCE 5 

be found of value to that daily increasing number 
of persons who experience considerable difficulty in 
making up their minds respecting the nature and 
origin of these phenomena, and who may be dis- 
posed to seek the explanation of all of them in some 
of those still obscure and little understood powers 
lying latent in our human nature. 

The inquiry has gone too far and the public in- 
terest in the subject is too great and too much on 
the increase for such an attitude of the mind to be 
a desirable and a safe one. If it be true that many 
of the phenomena, so frequently observed in con- 
nection with experiments increasingly resorted to 
for the purpose of mere amusement and entertain- 
ment, are due to extranous intelligence or intelli- 
gences, it is better and safer that this fact should 
be thoroughly known and realised, seeing that it is 
only thus that the moral and physical dangers which 
beyond all doubt attend some of these experiments, 
can be fully understood and recognised. 

As long ago as 1869 the sub-committee of the 
Dialectical Society of London, appointed for the 
purpose of inquiring into the nature and reality of 
the alleged phenomena, issued the following state- 
ments in connection with its official report : — 

" The result of our long-continued and carefully 
conducted experiments, after trial by every de- 
tective test we could devise, has established con- 
clusively : 



6 THE EVIDENCE 

" i. That under certain bodily or mental condi- 
tions of one or more of the persons present, a force 
is exhibited sufficient to set in motion heavy sub- 
stances, without the employment of any muscular 
force, without contact or material connection of any 
kind between such substances and the body of any 
person present. 

" 2. That this force can cause sounds to proceed, 
distinctly audible to all present, from solid sub- 
stances not in contact with, nor having any visible 
or material connection with, the body of any person 
present, and which sounds are proved to proceed 
from such substances by the vibrations which are 
distinctly felt when they are touched. 

" 3. That this force is frequently directed by in- 
telligence." 

In 1874 Sir William Crookes, f.r.s., published in 
the Quarterly Journal of Science the result of his 
researches into the obscure phenomena of spiritism 
and mediumship which he had carried on for a 
number of years, with the aid of specially devised 
scientific instruments and under conditions wholly 
precluding the possibility of fraud. The con- 
clusions he had arrived at were briefly stated as 
follows : — 

" Whilst I have observed many circumstances 
which appear to show that the will and intelligence 



THE EVIDENCE 7 

of the medium have much to do with the pheno- 
mena, I have observed some circumstances which 
seem conclusively to point to the agency of an out- 
side intelligence, not belonging to any human be- 
ing in the room." 

Nearly twenty-five years later (in 1898) Sir 
William Crookes delivered the presidential address 
before the British Association at Bristol, in the 
course of which he made the following state- 
ment : — 

" No incident in my scientific career is more 
widely known than the part I took, many years ago, 
in certain psychic researches. Thirty years have 
passed since I published an account of experiments 
tending to show that outside our scientific knowl- 
edge there exists a force, exercised by intelligence, 
differing from the ordinary intelligence common to 
mortals. This fact in my life is, of course, well 
understood by those who honoured me with the in- 
vitation to become your President. Perhaps among 
my audience some may feel curious as to whether I 
shall speak out or be silent. I elect to speak, al- 
though briefly. To enter at length on a still de- 
batable subject would be unduly to insist on a topic 
which — as Wallace, Lodge, and Barrett have al- 
ready shown — though not unfitted for discussion 
at these meetings, does not yet enlist the interest of 
the majority of my scientific brethren. To ignore 



8 THE EVIDENCE 

the subject would be an act of cowardice I feel no 
intention to commit. 

" To stop short at any research that bids fair to 
widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of 
difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach 
on science. There is nothing for the investigator to 
do but to go straight on, ' to explore up and down, 
inch by inch, with the taper his reason ' ; to follow 
the light wherever it may lead, even should it at 
times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp. / have nothing 
to retract, I adhere to my already published state- 
ments. Indeed, I might add much thereto. I re- 
gret only a certain crudity in those early expositions 
which, no doubt justly, militated against their ac- 
ceptance by the scientific world. My own knowl- 
edge at that time scarcely extended beyond the fact 
that certain phenomena new to science had assur- 
edly occurred and were attested by my sober senses 
and, better still, by automatic record." 

Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, describing the 
process of thought by which the conviction of the 
reality of the phenomena was reached by his own 
mind, writes as follows: — 

" From the age of fourteen I lived with an elder 
brother of advanced liberal and philosophical opin- 
ions, and I soon lost — and have never since re- 



THE EVIDENCE 9 

gained — all capacity of being affected in my judg- 
ment either by clerical influence or religious preju- 
dice. Up to the time when I first became acquainted 
with the facts of spiritualism I was a confirmed 
philosophical sceptic, rejoicing in the works of 
Voltaire, Strauss, and Carl Vogt, and an ardent ad- 
mirer — as I am still — of Herbert Spencer. I 
was so thoroughly and confirmed a materialist that 
I could not at that time find a place in my mind for 
the conception of spiritual existence or for any other 
agencies in the universe than matter and force. 
Facts, however, are stubborn things. . . . The 
facts beat me. They compelled me to accept them 
as facts long before I could accept the spiritual ex- 
planation of them. There was at that time no 
place in my fabric of thought into which it could 
have fitted. By slow degrees a place was made, but 
it was made not by any preconceived or theoretical 
opinions, but by the continuous action of fact upon 
fact which could not be got rid of in any other way. 
. . . That theory is most scientific which best 
explains the whole series of phenomena, and I there- 
fore claim that the spirit hypothesis is most scien- 
tific. Those who believe as I do — that spiritual 
beings can and do, subject to general laws and for 
certain purposes, communicate with us — must see 
in the steady advance of inquiry the assurance that, 
so far as their beliefs are logical deductions from 



io THE EVIDENCE 

the phenomena they have witnessed, those beliefs 
will at no distant date be accepted by all truth-seek- 
ing inquirers." 

Mr. W. F. Barrett, Professor of Experimental 
Physics in the University of Ireland, sums up the 
result of his own prolonged investigation of the 
subject in these brief words : — 

" What I am prepared to assert, from my own 
experience, is that neither hallucination, imposture, 
mal-observation, misdescription, nor any other well- 
recognised cause can account for the phenomena I 
have witnessed and that the simplest explanation is 
the spirit hypothesis." 

The following further testimonies of men em- 
inent in different branches of science and of litera- 
ture, and known as careful and painstaking investi- 
gators of occult phenomena, will be found of value 
to the student. 

Professor Sir Oliver Lodge, Birmingham (from 
his presidential address delivered before the Society 
for Psychical Research on January 31st, 1892) : — 

"If anyone cares to hear what sort of conviction 
has been borne in upon my own mind, as a scientific 
man, by some twenty years' familiarity with those 
questions which concern us, I am very willing to 
reply as frankly as I can. First, then, I am, for all 



THE EVIDENCE n 

personal purposes, convinced of the persistence of 
human existence beyond bodily death ; and though I 
am unable to justify that belief in a full and com- 
plete manner, yet it is a belief which has been pro- 
duced by scientific evidence — that is, it is based 
upon facts and experience." 

The late Professor Henry Sidgwick, of Cam- 
bridge, and the first President of the Society for 
Psychical Research, writing in 1893 : — 

" Although I do not myself at present regard the 
theory of * unembodied intelligences ' as the only 
hypothesis which will account for known facts, I 
admit that it is the hypothesis most obviously sug- 
gested by some of these facts." 

The late Frederick W. H. Myers, from his re- 
cently published work, Human Personality: — 

" I will here briefly state what facts they are 
which our recorded apparitions, etc., to my mind, 
actually prove. 

"(a) In the first place, they prove survival pure 
and simple; the persistence of the spirit's life as a 
structural law of the universe ; the inalienable herit- 
age of each several soul. 

"(&) In the second place, they prove that between 
the spiritual and the material worlds an avenue of 
communication does in fact exist; that which we 
call the despatch and the receipt of telepathic mes- 



12 THE EVIDENCE 

sages, or the utterance and the answer of prayer and 
supplication. 

"(c) In the third place, they prove that the sur- 
viving spirit retains, at least in some measure, the 
memories and the loves of earth. Without this 
persistence of love and memory should we be in 
truth the same? To what extent has any philoso- 
phy or any revelation assured us hereof till now ? 

" The above points, I think, are certain, if the 
apparitions and messages proceed in reality from 
the sources which they claim. On a lower evi- 
dential level comes the thesis drawn from the con- 
tents of the longer messages, which contents may, 
of course, be influenced in unknown degree by the 
expectation of the recipients or by some such in- 
fusion of dreamlike matter as I have already men- 
tioned. That thesis is as follows. I offer it for 
what it may be worth: Every element of indi- 
vidual wisdom, virtue, love, develops in infinite 
evolution toward an ever-highering hope; toward 
' Him who is at once thine innermost Self, and 
thine ever unattainable Desire.' " 

The late Professor De Morgan, President of the 
Mathematical Society, London, and afterwards 
Dean of University College: — 

" I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen 
and heard, in a manner which should make unbelief 



THE EVIDENCE 13 

impossible, things called spiritual, which cannot be 
taken by a rational being to be capable of explana- 
tion by imposture, coincidence, or mistake. So far 
I feel the ground firm under me." 

Dr. Charles Richet, Professor of Physiology at 
the University of Paris ( from an address on " The 
Conditions of Certainty," delivered before the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research on January 27th, 
1899): — 

" In the course of these studies (in Somnam- 
bulism) I have here and there observed certain facts 
of lucidity, of premonition, of telepathy: but since 
these facts were denied and ridiculed on every side, 
I had not pushed independence of mind so far as to 
believe them. I deliberately shut my eyes to phe- 
nomena which lay plain before me, and rather than 
discuss them I chose the easier course of denying 
them altogether. Or, I should rather say, instead 
of pondering on these inexplicable facts, I simply 
put them aside, and set them down to some illusion, 
or some error of observation. Nay, in my servile 
respect for the classic tradition I mocked at what 
was called spiritism ; and after reading the astound- 
ing statements which Mr. Crookes had published, 
I allowed myself — and here do I publicly beg his 
pardon for it ! — to laugh at them as heartily as 
almost everyone else was doing. But now I say 
just what my friend Ochorowicz says in the same 



i 4 THE EVIDENCE 

matter. I beat my breast and I cry: Pater 
peccavi ! How could I suppose that the savant who 
has discovered thallium and the radiometer and 
foreshadowed the Rontgen rays, could commit gross 
and inexplicable blunders and allow himself to be 
duped for years by tricks which a child could have 
exposed ? 

" A certain experiment in spiritism . . . 
came to shake my belief . . . (Some years 
later) when I left Milan I was fully convinced that 
all was true — as also were the eminent savants 
who took part in the sittings: BrofTerio, Gerosa, 
Finzi, and the great astronomer Schiaparelli. 
. . . (But) after we have witnessed such facts, 
everything concurs to make us doubt them. Now 
at this moment when these facts take place they 
seem to us certain, and we are willing to proclaim 
them openly, but when we return to ourselves, when 
we feel the irresistible influence of our environment, 
when our friends all laugh at our credulity, — then 
we are almost disarmed and we begin to doubt. 
May I not have been grossly deceived? I saw, no 
doubt, but did I see aright ? Who can prove to me 
that I did so? And then as the moment of the 
experiment becomes more remote, that experiment 
which once seemed so conclusive gets to seem more 
and more uncertain, and we end by letting our- 
selves be persuaded that we have been the victims 
of a trick. . . . The real world which sur- 



THE EVIDENCE 15 

rounds us, with its prejudices, well or ill founded, 
its scheme of habitual opinions, holds us in so 
strong a grasp that we can scarcely free ourselves 
completely. Certainty does not follow on demon- 
stration, it follows on habit. ... I have still 
a trace of doubt; doubt which is weak, indeed, to- 
day, but which may perchance be stronger to-mor- 
row. Yet such doubts, if they come, will not be 
due so much to any defect in the actual experiment, 
as to the inexorable strength of prepossession which 
holds one back from adopting a conclusion which 
contravenes the habitual and almost unconscious 
opinion of mankind." 

Dr. Frederic H. Van Eeden, a Dutch scientist 
(from his paper read at the Fourth International 
Congress of Psychology in Paris in 1901) : — 

" Academical science, obliged at last to> turn at- 
tention to these matters, if only in order to protect 
its own sacred theories, and to combat a heresy 
which began to become disquieting, has succeeded 
in reducing considerably the number of the phe- 
nomena declared to be convincing. Nevertheless, 
there always remain some which the most serious 
and scrupulous observers consider to be inexplicable 
according to physical laws. These are of two kinds 
— physical phenomena and psychical phenomena. 
It is to the second of these alone that I have paid 



16 THE EVIDENCE 

sufficient attention to enable me to form a decided 
opinion. 

" To be exact, there are persons endowed with 
exceptional faculties which give them knowledge, 
impossible to obtain by means of the senses. On 
this point all serious and scientific investigators 
who have been occupied for any length of time, and 
deeply, with the subject are in agreement. Fifteen 
years ago spiritualists had to be content to parade 
the names of Fechner, Zoellner, and Sir William 
Crookes. Now, if we reckon merely those scien- 
tists who accept the reality of the facts without the- 
orising as to their explanation, the list is much 
larger. After repeated experiences with Mrs. 
Thompson, I venture to classify myself among the 
convinced. 

". . . I have found it very difficult to the- 
oretically contravene the opinion that neither 
telepathy nor clairvoyance exist as personal facul- 
ties, but that all is the work of spirits. According 
to this opinion — which is maintained by men of 
high intelligence, such as Russel Wallace — spirits 
surround us always and in all places, and, not hav- 
ing anything more pressing to occupy them, are 
constantly employed communicating to us impulses, 
ideas, and fancies, which, according to their char- 
acter, are beneficent or malicious, and are agreeable 
or terrible, insignificant or marvellous, according to 
our degree of impressionableness or our condition of 



THE EVIDENCE 17 

health or morbidity. After this manner may be 
explained telepathy, clairvoyance, the faculties at- 
tributed to the unconscious mind, dreams, and even 
the hallucinations and fancies of the insane. 

" This position has seemed to me a very strong 
one. Whilst studying the dreams and morbid ideas 
of the insane, I have had a very vivid impression 
that a malign, diabolical, or demoniac influence was 
concerned with them, profiting by the physical weak- 
ness of a man to* instil into him all sorts of terrible, 
sad, and absurd fancies. 

" It has always seemed to me very improbable 
that all this is to be explained by reference to the 
unconscious, or to a secondary, personality. And, 
besides, all these modern psychological terms, such 
as unconscious, subliminal, secondary, or tertiary 
personality, are they much clearer or more scientific 
than the terms ' demon/ i spirit/ or ' ghost ' ? 

" In these difficult matters we are obliged largely 
to rely on our personal impressions, and to form 
conceptions more or less intuitive. This does not 
seem very precise, but it is inevitable, and, more- 
over, it is the same in all branches of science. Even 
astronomy rests on personal impressions (but veri- 
fied by many) and upon intuitive conceptions of 
probability, confirmed by repeated observation." 

Dr. R. Hodgson, U.S.A. (from " Observations of 
Certain Phenomena of Trance," published in Part 



18 THE EVIDENCE 

xxxiii. of the Proceedings of the Society for Psy- 
chical Research } 1897-8) : — ■ 

" Having tried the hypothesis of telepathy from 
the living for several years, and the ' spirit ' hypoth- 
esis also for several years, I have no hesitation in 
affirming with the most absolute assurance that the 
spirit hypothesis is justified by its fruits and the 
other hypothesis is not." 

Professor J. H. Hyslop, ph.d., Columbia Uni- 
versity, New York, U.S.A. (from "Observations 
of Certain Trance Phenomena," published in Part 
xli. of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical 
Research, 1901) : — 

" I have kept my mind steadily and only on the 
question whether some theory could not explain 
away the facts rather than accept spiritism. But 
I think that everyone without exception would ad- 
mit that, superficially at least, the phenomena repre- 
sent a good case for spiritism as a rational possibil- 
ity. . . . 

" I am satisfied if the evidence forces us in our 
rational moods to tolerate the spiritistic theory as 
rationally possible and respectable, as against 
stretching telepathy and its adjuncts into infinity 
and omniscience." 



THE EVIDENCE 19 

Professor William James, Harvard University, 
U.S.A. (from his presidential address delivered be- 
fore the Society for Psychical Research, in June, 
1896: — 

" For me the thunderbolt has fallen, and the or- 
thodox belief has not merely had its presumptions 
weakened, but the truth itself of the belief is de- 
cisively overthrown. If you will let me use the 
language of the professional logic-shop, a universal 
proposition can be made untrue by a particular in- 
stance. If you wish to upset the law that all crows 
are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows 
are ; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be 
white. My own white crow is Mrs. Piper. In the 
trances of this medium I cannot resist the conviction 
that knowledge appears which she has never gained 
by the ordinary waking use of her eyes and ears and 
wits. What the source of this knowledge may be I 
know not, and have not the glimmer of an explana- 
tory suggestion to make, but from admitting the 
fact of such knowledge, I can see no escape. So 
when I turn to the rest of our evidence, ghosts and 
all, I cannot carry with me the irreversible negative 
bias of the rigorously scientific mind, with its pre- 
sumption as to what the true order of nature ought 
to be. I feel as if, though the evidence be flimsy 
in spots, it may nevertheless collectively carry heavy 
weight. The rigorously scientific mind may, in 
truth, overreach itself. Science means, first of all, 



20 THE EVIDENCE 

a certain dispassionate method. To suppose that it 
means a certain set of results that one should pin 
one's faith upon and hug for ever, is sadly to mis- 
take its genius, and degrades the scientific body to 
the status of a sect" 

In the face of evidence so striking and abundant, 
and coming from such authoritative and unexpected 
quarters, it may confidently be asserted that any 
remaining scepticism as to the reality and objectivity 
of some of the phenomena under consideration, 
must either be ascribed to imperfect acquaintance 
with the subject or to that peculiar attitude of mind 
which, in so many persons, is constitutional and 
which is apt to resist the strongest evidence and the 
most overwhelming amount of human testimony. 

Experience constantly teaches that there is a cer- 
tain order of mind to which the acceptance of any 
apparently new truth presents very great difficulty, 
and to which the very notion of a preternatural 
world and preternatural action would seem to be an 
intellectual impossibility. Minds long and exclu- 
sively occupied with one particular line of study and 
investigation are sometimes known to lose the very 
power of conceiving of the possibility of truth lying 
anywhere outside the sphere of that particular line. 

Such persons are very apt to complicate, if not to 
hinder, the pursuit of truth by obscuring and toning 
down the force and value of evidence, and by thus 



THE EVIDENCE 21 

preventing the ordinary inquirer from arriving at 
the actual facts of the case. We have ample illus- 
tration of this in the writings of some amateur 
psychical investigators who, while themselves un- 
ceasingly occupied with the subject, resort to a 
thousand ingenious devices with a view to mystify- 
ing their own minds and to thus escaping plain 
facts and incontrovertible scientific evidence. Oth- 
ers complicate the inquiry by the suggestion of 
absurd and grotesque theories infinitely more dif- 
ficult of acceptance by the well-ordered mind than 
that which the facts themselves so clearly and mani- 
festly indicate. 

The statements of such persons should not, there- 
fore, be weighed in the light of the conventional 
sceptical attitude of mind, but in that of the abun- 
dant evidence which, in the course of years, has come 
to hand, and which is based upon accurate and 
painstaking research conducted by men trained in 
habits of careful scientific observation. " The man 
who denies the phenomena of spiritism to-day," 
writes an experienced student of psychical research, 
" is not entitled to be called a sceptic ; he is simply 
ignorant, and it would be a hopeless task to attempt 
to enlighten him." 

The character and importance of this evidence is 
here so strongly insisted upon because it is felt that, 
in the present state of the inquiry, and with the 



22 THE EVIDENCE 

daily growing public interest in the subject, the in- 
terests of truth can best be served by a clear recog- 
nition and an intelligent understanding of all the 
facts which modern research has brought to light. 
It is the half or imperfect knowledge of the subject, 
the persistent hesitation of the mind to admit the 
action of independent intelligence in connection with 
some of the phenomena which, in the writer's ex- 
perience, involve those perils, both moral and physi- 
cal, of which we have hints in the works and state- 
ments of all really experienced modern students and 
investigators. It is well known that at the present 
time spiritistic experiments are increasingly being 
made a means of social amusement and entertain- 
ment, and are being privately resorted to by persons 
constitutionally and morally little fitted for such 
delicate and complicated operations. For them the 
dangers, fully admitted by expert investigators to 
attend the induction of the phenomena, even under 
the most favourable circumstances, are seriously in- 
creased if there be any doubt as to the nature of the 
cause or causes which are instrumental in producing 
them. 

Indeed, the policy of silence respecting the mat- 
ter, still advocated in certain quarters and with a 
view, no doubt, to avoiding conceivably greater 
dangers, can no longer be considered a wise and a 
safe one. The published results of the work of the 
Society for Psychical Research, and of individual 



THE EVIDENCE 23 

experimenters whose very names must be consid- 
ered as a guarantee of good faith; the spread of 
popular spiritistic literature; the active propaganda 
now being made by all the English and foreign 
societies of spiritists, would in themselves render 
such a policy an ineffectual and impossible one. 

Let it once be clearly and fully understood that, 
not abnormal mind-action, but extraneous spirit in- 
telligence lies at the foundation and is the source of 
a very large proportion of those occult manifestions 
so fascinating to inquiring minds, and for many 
such inquiring minds the subject will at once as- 
sume a very different character, and considerations 
will present themselves which can scarcely fail to 
modify their entire attitude towards the matter. 

It is therefore strongly urged that the evidence 
here adduced (a mere fragment of that which is 
available) be fully and carefully weighed and con- 
sidered, that in the event of any lingering doubt 
presenting itself, the process by which such remark- 
able results were obtained be carefully studied in the 
original works of the respective investigators, and 
that no effort be made to escape the inevitable 
inference to which truth and fact compel the un- 
biased mind. 

It will thus be found to be wholly impossible to 
escape the conclusion that a very large proportion 
of the phenomena commonly termed spiritistic are 
objective in character, that they are often directed 



24 THE EVIDENCE 

and controlled by intelligence, and that that in- 
telligence is frequently one apart from and inde- 
pendent of the intelligence of any person or persons 
assisting at the experiment. 



II 

THE PHENOMENA 

THE following classification of the phenomena 
given fry Sir William Crookes in his book, 
Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism, will 
best serve our purpose in presenting to the reader 
a concise and comprehensive account of the results 
attained by recent psychical research : — 

" I now proceed," writes Sir William, " to clas- 
sify some of the phenomena which have come under 
my notice, proceeding from the simple to the more 
complex, etc. . . . With the exception of cases 
specially mentioned, the occurrences have taken 
place in my own house, in the light and without; 
private friends present besides the medium : — 

" i. The movement of heavy bodies with con- 
tact but without mechanical exertion. 

" 2. The phenomena of percussive and other al- 
lied sounds. 

" 3. The alteration of weight of bodies. 

" 4. Movements of heavy substances when at a 
distance from the medium. 
3 25 



26 THE PHENOMENA 

"5. The rising of tables and chairs off the ground 
without contact with any person. 

" 6. The levitation of human beings. 

" 7. Movement of various small articles without 
contact with any person. 

" 8. Luminous appearances. 

" 9. The appearance of hands either self-lum- 
inous or visible by ordinary light. 

" 10. Direct writing. 

" 11. Phantom forms and faces." 

To these must be added a series of phenomena 
which, while unattended by any external and in- 
dependent manifestations, may nevertheless be con- 
sidered as abnormal in character, since, in very 
many instances, they give evidence of the presence 
and action of independent controlling intelligence. 
These subjective phenomena may be classified as 
follows : — 

Planchette and automatic writing. 

Clairvoyance and clairaudience. 

Trance oratory and speaking with tongues. 

I. THE MOVEMENT OF HEAVY BODIES WITH CON- 
TACT BUT WITHOUT MECHANICAL EXERTION. 

This is in most instances the earliest phenomenon 
which takes place when a number of persons gather 
together for the purpose of holding what is com- 
monly termed a " seance," and when they place their 



THE PHENOMENA 27 

hands upon an ordinary light table around which 
they are seated. 

The phenomenon is generally ushered in by a 
sensation on the part of the investigators of cold air 
passing over their hands and faces and coming from 
the direction of one of their number, whom expe- 
rience indicates as the " medium," or " psychic," 
or " sensitive," and who is found to be, through- 
out the experiment, the chief instrument in the 
evocation of the manifestations. 

It is interesting to note that these breaths of cold 
air are perceived by persons often wholly ignorant 
of the subject, and in many instances assisting at 
such an experiment for the first time. The impres- 
sion to. them is generally that of a slight draught 
coming from a window in their opinion accidentally 
left open. The phenomenon has, however, nothing 
in common with the ordinary natural movement of 
the air, since experience has shown that a light 
object such as a thin piece of paper, exposed to its 
action, exhibits no perceptible motion of any kind. 

As the experiment continues, perceptible move- 
ments of the table may, after a while, be observed. 
These movements are at first jerky and undecided 
in character and have all the appearance of being 
unconsciously produced by one of the sitters; but 
they become after a time more regular and definite 
and exhibit the operation of a force which would 
seem to work independently, and which cannot be 



28 THE PHENOMENA 

accounted for by any kind of action consciously or 
unconsciously exercised on the part of the members 
of the circle. 

When this force is fully developed three or four 
strong adults, deliberately exercising all their physi- 
cal strength, may be wholly unable to control it. 
Thus a table tilted up on one side and remaining 
suspended in that position, will withstand the com- 
bined attempt of several persons to bring it down 
to the ground. Under very favourable circum- 
stances, and in the presence of a strong sensitive, a 
ponderous dining-room table on which many heavy 
objects have been placed, may thus rise up bodily 
in the air, and may remain suspended for some 
seconds, only gradually and without any injury to 
the articles upon it, resuming its normal position. 

The sensation experienced by those in contact 
with the table is that of an extraordinary energy 
or force surging through it, and imparting to it a 
kind of vitality which would almost seem to trans- 
form it into a creature of life. 

The same phenomenon may, of course, be evoked 
in connection with any other object such as a desk, 
a chair, or a box, placed in the room in which the 
experiment is being conducted, contact with it of the 
hands of the sensitive and of perhaps one or two 
of the sitters being the only condition necessary for 
inducing it. 

While the force or energy displayed in the devel- 



THE PHENOMENA 29 

opment of this phenomenon has in its initial stages 
all the appearance of a blind and mechanical force, 
in some unknown way depending upon and issuing 
from the body of the sensitive and the sitters, there 
appear, after a certain time, and when a particular 
degree of " development " has been attained, un- 
mistakable signs of the presence and action of an 
independent and controlling intelligence. This be- 
comes apparent from the circumstance that, while 
both the sensitive and the sitters remain in a per- 
fectly normal condition and entirely under observa- 
tion, questions put by them in the audible voice are 
intelligently answered by a variety of movements of 
the table, specially suggested with a view to testing 
the reality and independence of the intelligence. 

In very many instances, of course, and especially 
under unfavourable conditions, the phenomenon 
does not rise above the initial stage, leaving the im- 
pression on the minds of the investigators that the 
force exhibited is, if at present unknown and un- 
accounted for, nevertheless a natural and mechanical 
one, and that the action of independent intelligence 
in connection with it cannot be conceded. This has 
been the experience and is the verdict of even scien- 
tific inquirers who have not hesitated to give that 
verdict to the world. Such a conclusion, however, 
is based upon inaccurate knowledge and upon im- 
perfect and superficial observation. All experienced 
psychic students are aware that it is often only 



3 o THE PHENOMENA 

after repeated and prolonged sittings that the full 
development of the " psychic force " is obtained and 
that independent intelligence is exhibited in connec- 
tion with it, and that in by far the larger number of 
instances that stage of the experiment is never 
reached at all. That it is, however, the ultimate 
issue of the experiment is now admitted by all pa- 
tient and painstaking students who have devoted 
sufficient time to the observation of the phenomenon, 
and who have carried on their investigations with 
an open mind and in a systematic manner. 

As will be seen later on, it is fully admitted that 
the mysterious force thus called into operation, in 
some unknown way issues from the physical organ- 
ism of the sensitive and the sitters, and is in itself 
an unintelligent force. But it is with equal confi- 
dence asserted that when it is available in sufficient 
quantity, and is wholly detached from the physical 
organism, it can be, and beyond all doubt is, fre- 
quently manipulated by intelligence independent of 
and other than that of the psychic and the investi- 
gators assisting at the experiment. 

II. THE PHENOMENA OF PERCUSSIVE AND OTHER 
ALLIED SOUNDS. 

When the physical manifestations described in 
the preceding pages have reached a certain degree 
of what is technically termed " development," the 



THE PHENOMENA 31 

phenomenon is apt to pass into a further phase, and 
instead of the vibrations and tiltings of the table, 
clear percussive sounds, resembling the tapping of 
the wood by means of some solid object, such as 
a pencil, become perceptible. These sounds, being 
at first extremely faint and delicate, are apt, for 
some time, to entirely escape the attention of the 
inexperienced, being in most instances mistaken for 
creaks in the wood, produced apparently by uncon- 
scious muscular movements on the part of the sit- 
ters, or by the warmth and friction of the wood 
caused by the many hands in contact with the table. 
But if the conditions are favourable, these deli- 
cate taps become louder and more distinct as the 
experiment continues, and in the course of time they 
are apt to assume so emphatic a form that there is 
no longer any possibility of ignoring or of mistak- 
ing them. But what is of still greater importance 
and significance is the circumstance, that they be- 
come distinctly intelligent in character — a means, 
in fact, by which questions put by the investigator 
can be answered, and by which information, in some 
instances wholly unknown to any person present, 
can be conveyed. This impression is most certainly 
left with every really fair-minded inquirer who has 
taken pains to subject the phenomenon to careful 
tests, and who has had opportunities of observing it 
under favourable conditions. 



$2 THE PHENOMENA 

The independence of the intelligence directing 
these peculiar sounds has to be admitted for the 
following reasons : — 

1. The sounds occur and are intelligent while the 
sensitive and all the members of the circle remain 
in an entirely normal condition, and perhaps adopt 
exceptional measures with a view to avoiding any 
kind of conscious or subconscious mind-action in 
connection with them. 

2. The location of the sounds, their character and 
intensity, can be changed or modified at the sug- 
gestion of any one of the experimenters. 

3. They can, in many instances, and at the re- 
quest of the sitters, be elicited in other parts of the 
room, and away from the table on which the hands 
of the investigators are placed. 

4. They are sometimes produced in objects sug- 
gested by the intelligence directing the sounds, and 
considered by all the investigators as the objects 
least likely to prove suitable for the purpose. 

5. The sounds have a distinctly perceptible indi- 
viduality. They are faint or loud, wooden or me- 
tallic, as the case may be, in order to thus dis- 
tinguish between the different entities declared to 
be communicating by them, and this individuality is 
sometimes throughout the entire experiment a sus- 
tained and a consistent one. 

6. The force manipulated for producing the 



THE PHENOMENA 33 

sounds can be employed experimentally and intelli- 
gently in a variety of ways, the signals agreed upon 
being given on the closed and locked keyboard of a 
piano, or on some other musical instrument happen- 
ing to be in the room in which the investigation is 
being conducted. 

7. There is, in many instances, a striking aptness 
and independence in the communications conveyed 
by these sounds, and this in cases where the con- 
scious and subconscious minds of the sensitive and 
the sitters can be shown to have no conceivable con- 
nection with such communications. 

III. THE ALTERATION OF WEIGHT OF BODIES. 

On this point Sir William Crookes wrote, in the 
Quarterly Journal of Science, of October, 1871, as 
follows : — 

" Before fitting up special apparatus for these ex- 
periments, I had seen, on five separate occasions, 
objects varying in weight from 25 to 100 lbs. tem- 
porarily influenced in such a manner that I, and 
others present, could with difficulty lift them from 
the floor. Wishing to ascertain whether this was a 
physical fact, or merely due to a variation in the 
power of our own strength under the influence of 
imagination, I tested with a weighing machine the 
phenomenon on two subsequent occasions, when I 
had an opportunity of meeting Mr. Home at the 



34 THE PHENOMENA 

house of a friend. On the first occasion the in- 
crease of weight was from 8 lbs. normally to 36 
lbs., 48 lbs., and 46 lbs. in three successive ex- 
periments tried under strict scrutiny. On the sec- 
ond occasion, tried about a fortnight after, in the 
presence of other observers, I found the increase of 
weight to be from 8 lbs. to 23 lbs., 43 lbs., and 27 
lbs., in three successive trials, varying the condi- 
tions. As I had the entire management of the 
above-mentioned experimental trials, employed an 
instrument of great accuracy, and took every care to 
exclude the possibility of the results being influenced 
by trickery, I was not unprepared for a satisfactory 
result when the fact was properly tested in my own 
laboratory." 

IV. & V. MOVEMENTS OF HEAVY SUBSTANCES WHEN 
AT A DISTANCE FROM THE MEDIUM, AND THE 
RISING OF TABLES AND CHAIRS OFF THE 
GROUND WITHOUT CONTACT WITH ANY PERSON. 

This phenomenon is but another phase of the 
physical manifestations already described in the pre- 
ceding pages. It takes place when the sensitive is an 
exceptionally powerful one, or when he has passed 
through a certain process of " development," or is 
assisted by an exceptionally strong circle. A very 
large amount of the mysterious force referred to 
would then seem to be set free and to become avail- 
able for an unusual display of physical power and 



THE PHENOMENA 35 

energy. Heavy objects and pieces of furniture, 
which the combined strength of several persons 
cannot move beyond one or two inches, may thus 
be shifted or " floated " with the greatest ease, grand 
pianos and ponderous dining-room sideboards may 
be made to change places, chairs with persons seated 
upon them may be raised to the ceiling and lowered 
again to the ground. And this may take place with- 
out any kind of physical and personal contact of 
the sensitive with these objects, without any wish 
or suggestion on his part, and not infrequently to 
the very great alarm and discomfiture of the per- 
sons present. 

But here, too, there is clear evidence of inde- 
pendent intelligence operating in connection with 
the phenomenon, since there is an exhibition of com- 
plete and intelligent " control " of the force em- 
ployed, little or no damage ever being done to the 
objects thus manipulated or to the living agents 
witnessing or eliciting it. 

Were the force employed acting mechanically and 
without direction, and did it operate according to 
the laws governing other and possibly kindred pow- 
ers of nature, the phenomenon could scarcely be 
supposed to take the form which it does, and the 
result would necessarily be a very different one. 
In many instances the manifestations described are 
displayed for the very purpose of effectively and 
conclusively demonstrating the presence of inde- 



36 THE PHENOMENA 

pendent intelligence and of its entire control of the 
mysterious force called into operation. 

VI. THE LEVITATION OF HUMAN BEINGS. 

" This," writes Sir William Crookes, " has oc- 
curred in my presence on four occasions in dark- 
ness; but ... I will here only. mention cases 
in which the deductions of reason were confirmed by 
the sense of sight. . . . 

" On one occasion I witnessed a chair, with a 
lady sitting on it, rise several inches from the 
ground. On another occasion, to- avoid the sus- 
picion of this being in some way performed by her- 
self, the lady knelt on the chair in such manner that 
its four feet were visible to us. It then rose about 
three inches, remained suspended for about ten 
seconds, and then slowly descended. . . . 

" The most striking case of levitation which I 
have witnessed has been with Mr. Home. On three 
separate occasions have I seen him raised completely 
from the floor of the room. Once sitting in an 
easy-chair, once kneeling on his chair, and once 
standing up. On each occasion I had full oppor- 
tunity of watching the occurrence as it was taking 
place. There are at least a hundred recorded in- 
stances of Mr. Home's rising from the ground, 
etc." 1 

1 Quarterly Journal of Science, January, 1874. 



THE PHENOMENA 37 

The late Lord Lindsay wrote in July, 1871 : — 

" I may mention that on another occasion I was 
sitting with Mr. Home and Lord Adare and a 
cousin of his. During the sitting Mr. Home went 
into a trance, and in that state was carried out of 
the window in the room next to where we were, and 
was brought in at our window. The distance be- 
tween the windows was about seven feet six inches, 
and there was not the slightest foothold between 
them, nor was there more than a twelve-inch pro- 
jection to each window, which served as a ledge to 
put flowers on. We heard the window in the next 
room lifted up, and almost immediately after we 
saw Home floating in air outside our window." 

VII. MOVEMENTS OF VARIOUS SMALL ARTICLES 
WITHOUT CONTACT WITH ANY PERSON. 

This, too, is a very ordinary and well-known 
phenomenon which is apt to occur in the presence 
of a " developed " sensitive, and which has fre- 
quently been observed in the daylight and under 
conditions that can leave no shadow of doubt upon 
the mind of the percipient. Photographs, or small 
drawing-room ornaments have thus been seen to 
change their places, and articles kept in a room other 
than that occupied by the sensitive, have been 
brought through closed doors and deposited at a 
spot previously indicated — in some instances placed 



38 THE PHENOMENA 

into the hands of the person requesting the apport 
of the article. 

Many such remarkable instances of apport and of 
matter passing through matter have been observed 
under the strictest possible test conditions, and will 
be found recorded in the late Leipzic professor 
Zoellner's deeply interesting work entitled Trans- 
cendental Physics. The writer has himself ob- 
served one instance of this kind in a private house, 
and under circumstances entirely precluding the 
possibility of deception. 

There is, perhaps, no phenomenon which so dis- 
tinctly exhibits the action of extraneous and in- 
dependent intelligence as this one. Thus, not in- 
frequently, will some object be apported in this 
manner with a view to setting up some train of 
thought or. memory in the mind of one of the ob- 
servers, and to leaving upon that mind the im- 
.pression that the spirit of some deceased friend or 
relative is communicating. In some instances an 
article reposing in the pocket of one of the sitters 
will be mysteriously transferred to that of another, 
placed on the head or shoulder of one of the party, 
or concealed in some distant and perhaps inaccessi- 
ble part of the room. A pencil may thus be sud- 
denly seen to move, made to touch the ceiling, and 
to gradually descend again upon the table, finally 
placing itself into the hand of the sensitive, as an 



THE PHENOMENA 39 

indication that writing is to be given and that some 
kind of communication is to be made. 

The author has observed instances in which the 
test conditions imposed by the investigators were 
augmented by the operating intelligences them- 
selves, some additional and unexpected manifesta- 
tion being introduced with a view to exhibiting the 
entire independence of the phenomenon and of the 
directing spirit intelligence, of both the sensitive and 
the sitters. 

VIII. LUMINOUS APPEARANCES. 

The term " spirit lights " is a very familiar one in 
occult literature. It is employed to designate a, 
phenomenon which is frequently observed in the 
presence of a good sensitive, and which, of course, 
takes place when the seance is held in the dark. It 
is not easy to accurately describe it to any person 
who has not himself observed it, since the light re- 
ferred to is unlike any other kind of light of which 
we have at present any knowledge. Sir William 
Crookes has tried to produce these lights artificially, 
but he has entirely failed to do so. The phenom- 
enon resembles perhaps most closely that exhib- 
ited by the movements of a number of large glow- 
worms on a dark and still summer's night. If a 
dark room be imagined with a multitude of these 
wonderful little creatures rapidly passing from point 



40 THE PHENOMENA 

to point, now exhibiting the light, now obscuring it, 
occasionally settling upon an object and remaining 
stationary, and then again moving on, a fairly ac- 
curate impression will be obtained of the character 
of this very extraordinary phenomenon. 

Under ordinary conditions, the size of these spirit 
lights is about that of a fairly large glow-worm; but 
with a really good sensitive, and under very favour- 
able conditions, it may be very much larger. Sir 
William Crookes has observed one about the size of 
a turkey's egg which, he says, floated about for some 
time and then " struck the table with the sound of a 
hard solid body three times." 

In some instances the appearance of these lights 
is followed by other similar manifestations in the 
shape of a luminous hand, the outline of a lu- 
minous face, or head, or body. Some of the phan- 
tom forms described under paragraph xi. are some- 
times seen to carry one of these lights in their hands, 
and to pass it up and down their form with a view 
to making themselves distinctly visible to all the per- 
sons present. Paper, too, placed on a table around 
which a number of persons are seated with a view 
to eliciting the phenomenon known as " direct writ- 
ing," may often be seen to become luminous, this 
generally taking place immediately before the suc- 
cess of the experiment, and being indicative of it. 
In some cases, as already pointed out, the light 
would appear to become solid, an audible sound 



THE PHENOMENA 41 

being produced upon its coming in contact with any 
piece of furniture or other hard substance. 

No explanation can at present be suggested as to 
the source and character of these lights. In all 
probability they are but another form of that pe- 
culiar " force," apparently stored up in the human 
body, or at least in some human bodies, and capable, 
under certain conditions, of becoming detached from 
the organism and of being manipulated by intelli- 
gence. Scientific research may hereafter help us 
to better understand the phenomenon in its purely 
physical aspect. 

The important point in connection with the treat- 
ment of the subject here is the circumstance that 
these " spirit lights " are unquestionably controlled 
and directed by independent intelligence. This is ap- 
parent from the very production of the phenomenon 
at the request of the investigators, all of whom, the 
sensitive included, remain frequently in an entirely 
normal condition and have no sort of connection 
with, or indeed knowledge of, the phenomenon and 
its cause. Indeed these spirit lights are often made 
to serve an intentionally intelligent purpose, appear- 
ing in some part of the room, specially indicated, 
or perhaps settling above or near the head of one of 
the sitters with a view to indicating the presence of 
some spirit intelligence to be more fully disclosed 
later on. Or they will flash out intelligent answers 

to questions put by a pre-arranged code of signals, 
4 



42 THE PHENOMENA 

the light flashes taking the place of the tilts or raps 
already described in the earlier paragraphs. To per- 
sons who have had frequent opportunity of wit- 
nessing this phenomenon there cannot be, and 
scarcely is any doubt that, whatever the origin of 
the lights themselves, they are unquestionably un- 
der the control and direction of intelligence, that in- 
telligence not that of any person assisting at the ex- 
periment. 

X. DIRECT WRITING. 

What is technically termed " direct writing," in 
contradistinction to " automatic " or " planchette " 
writing (which will be referred to hereafter), is 
frequently obtained in the presence of developed 
sensitives, and is generally looked upon in spirit- 
istic circles as affording very striking proof of the 
action of independent and supernormal intelligence. 
This phenomenon has the further merit that, unlike 
most of the other mystic occurrences, it leaves tan- 
gible and permanent objective evidence behind it. 
It is consequently a phenomenon very much sought 
after by experimenters, but only very rarely and 
with very few sensitives obtained. 

This writing simply makes its appearance on 
sheets of paper placed in the centre of a table, around 
which a number of persons and a strong sensitive 
are seated. The author himself has obtained it in 
fairly good light, the sitters being more than a foot 



THE PHENOMENA 43 

distant from the table, and remaining throughout 
the experiment under constant mutual observation. 
It appeared on paper previously marked and in- 
itialed, and taken from a newly bought and opened 
packet. But the mystic writing has also appeared 
on a piece of paper put into a closed and locked 
desk, on porcelain and other ordinary slates, on the 
wall or ceiling of the room in which the seance was 
being held. 

A pencil or a small portion of the lead, about the 
size of a grain of wheat, is generally placed upon the 
paper selected for the purpose, although this too 
may be entirely dispensed with, the substance nec- 
essary for the production of the writing being, ac- 
cording to the statement of the intelligences, easily 
obtainable from any stray pencil that may happen 
to be in the house in which the experiment is being 
made. 

When the pencil is used it is apt at first to move 
about the paper in a mysterious way, suggesting the 
attempt, on the part of an invisible hand, to seize 
hold of it : when " control " is fully established the 
writing will proceed in a regular- and orderly way. 
At other times the pencil, together with the paper, 
will be suddenly snatched up, the sound of rapid 
writing will become audible, and after a few sec- 
onds, pencil and paper (the latter covered with 
writing) will drop onto the table. The writer has 
still in his possession several sheets of paper covered 



44 THE PHENOMENA 

with the mystic writing and obtained by him, many 
years ago, in a private house and without the assist- 
ance of a professional sensitive. 

A certain luminosity of the paper, declared to 
be due to " spirit magnetism " and applied for the 
purpose of removing it from the sphere of the ob- 
structive psychical emanations necessarily generated 
by the sitters, often becomes distinctly and simul- 
taneously perceptible to all the sitters immediately 
before the success of the experiment. 

There are about these specimens of " direct writ- 
ing " several very unique and extraordinary features 
which, whatever the origin of the phenomenon, 
would certainly seem to mark them as distinctly ab- 
normal in character. 

i. The letters, although formed by pencil sub- 
stance, are, in some instances, so minute that they 
can only be deciphered by the use of a magnifying 
glass. 

2. The writing is sometimes marvellously beau- 
tiful and regular in character, the divisions between 
the lines being so accurately adhered to and the 
letters, however small, so perfectly formed, that 
no person, even with long practice, could possibly 
be supposed to execute it under the conditions indi- 
cated. 

3. There is, at the back of the paper, no impres- 



THE PHENOMENA 45 

sion whatever of the pencil marks observable under 
all ordinary conditions. 

4. Writing, sometimes occupying a whole sheet 
of note-paper, and containing well- formed and in- 
telligent sentences, is frequently executed in a few 
seconds of time. 

5. The writing is sometimes done on the inside 
or the bottom sheet of a packet of note-paper made 
up of, perhaps, six or seven sheets. 

6. The handwriting of these " direct scripts " is, 
in many instances, wholly unlike that of any of 
the sitters, all of whom may have remained through- 
out the experiment in an entirely normal condition. 

7. The communications conveyed by these means 
are often of a highly intelligent and apt character, 
directly bearing upon the purpose for which the ex- 
periment is being made, and leaving upon all the 
sitters the impression of the presence and action of 
independent intelligence, thoughtfully, and in very 
many instances most resourcefully, assisting at it. 

XI. PHANTOM FORMS AND FACES. 

The final link in the chain of physical phenomena 
known to modern occultism is the " materialisa- 
tion " of apparently human forms and faces in such 
manner and under such conditions as to become 
objectively and simultaneously visible to all the per- 
sons assisting at the experiment. 



46 THE PHENOMENA 

This phenomenon is only obtained in the presence 
of a sensitive of exceptional power and " develop- 
ment," and while in a condition of deep trance or in- 
sensibility. This trance state is not induced by the 
deliberate hypnotic action of any person present, but 
it takes place naturally, some little time after the 
formation of the circle and after the creation of what 
is technically termed favourable or good " condi- 
tions." 

In most instances the induction of the introductory 
stage of this trance state, to be more fully referred 
to hereafter, is attended by some extremely unpleas- 
ant and repulsive manifestations, the sensitive ap- 
parently enduring a great deal of pain and discom- 
fort, and labouring under some kind of physical 
oppression. But these symptoms disappear after 
a time, the sensitive passing into a state of profound 
insensibility, and only by an occasional deep sigh or 
groan or a violent shaking and twisting of the body, 
giving indication of continued life. 

When this stage of entire insensibility has been 
reached, and complete darkness of the room in which 
the experiment is being made has been secured, the 
phenomenon is apt to develop very rapidly. Hands, 
manifestly not belonging to any person in the room, 
or the dim outlines of faces or of human forms 
become visible, and gradually gain in solidity and 
clearness. In some instances the entire form, en- 
veloped in what would seem to be a kind of light 



THE PHENOMENA 47 

drapery, is fully and immediately " materialised," 
moves about the room, speaks to the sitters in an 
audible whisper, and, after a time, " dematerialises " 
— melts away again before their eyes. The form 
apparently falls to pieces in a manner not unsim- 
ilar to what one may conceive the sudden melting 
of a large wax doll to be like, a mere fragment of its 
fabric, resembling a white cloud or vapour, remain- 
ing finally visible for a moment or two on the car- 
pet or floor through which it would seem to pass. 
Sometimes the same form will, a second or two after 
this manifest dissolution, appear solidly recon- 
structed in some other part of the room in which 
the seance is being held. 

The solidity and life-likeness of these forms would 
seem to depend very largely upon the sensitive and 
the sitters. If the conditions are very favourable 
they may have all the characteristics of real human 
beings with all the functions of a human body in 
full working order. The pulse or the heart may be 
felt to be beating, and the organs of sight or of 
speech or of hearing to be acting to perfection. If 
the " psychic force " available be only moderate in 
degree (which is more generally the case) the forms 
will be faint and have an ethereal and transparent 
appearance, an outstretched hand or foot of a sitter 
easily passing through them and the forms them- 
selves remaining visible but for a very brief period 
of time. 



48 THE PHENOMENA 

In some instances, and especially in cases where 
the phenomenon is apt to be elicited frequently and 
systematically, the forms have been known to re- 
main materialised for a considerable time, to have 
apported flowers and other light articles, to have 
carried on prolonged and interesting conversations, 
and to have acted in other respects like ordinary hu- 
man beings, possessing and operating in an ordinary 
human body. Sometimes, as already mentioned, 
they will bring with them what they term their own 
light — ■ a luminous kind of substance about the size 
of an egg. This they will pass over form and fea- 
tures, imparting to them a peculiar diaphanous bril- 
liancy apt to produce a very striking effect in a dark 
room. 

It should be explained that, according to the state- 
ments of the intelligences, the exclusion of the sun- 
light from the seance room is, in connection with 
this and similar phenomena, an unavoidable neces- 
sity; first, on account of the sensitive himself, and 
in order to ensure the best possible conditions; sec- 
ondly, on account of the extremely delicate char- 
acter of the phenomenon exhibited. It is main- 
tained thai the " psychic force " or substance, 
abstracted from the organism with a view to the 
building up of the spirit form, is highly sensitive 
to natural light, and that its detachment under such 
conditions would be certain to be attended by bodily 
injury to the sensitive. It is also asserted that, ex- 



THE PHENOMENA 49 

cept under very favourable conditions and in the 
presence of an unusually powerful medium and 
circle, the materialised forms could not be rendered 
visible in ordinary daylight. 

It should be added, however, that trustworthy 
accounts are to hand which give particulars of ma- 
terialisations having been obtained under such ordi- 
nary normal conditions and with sensitives whose 
powers had been systematically " developed " in the 
daylight from the very outset. 

That there is, in the production of this phenome- 
non, conclusive evidence of the action of extraneous 
and independent intelligence, abstracting from the 
organism of the sensitive (and possibly from other 
to us unknown sources) the necessary " psychic sub- 
stance " and manipulating it for the purpose of con- 
structing these forms, can scarcely be doubted by 
those who have witnessed the phenomenon under 
really favourable conditions and who approach the 
study of the subject in a fair and unbiased frame 
of mind. This delicate phenomenon, it must be re- 
membered, only takes place under exceptionally 
good conditions, and is subject to a variety of fluc- 
tuations, largely depending upon the elements com- 
posing the circle, and upon other circumstances 
which need not be mentioned here. For many spir- 
itualists, too, thoroughly convinced that they are 
thus in constant living intercourse with their de- 
parted friends and relatives, the phenomenon has a 



50 THE PHENOMENA 

distinctly religious and personal aspect, and they 
are apt, in consequence, to jealously guard the mani- 
festations from the intrusive gaze of strangers and 
experimenters, and only under the most exceptional 
circumstances to allow outsiders to be present. It 
therefore becomes more than probable that many, if 
not most, of our modern writers on psychical sub- 
jects have never themselves observed the phenome- 
non concerning which they argue so plausibly and 
have so many learned things to say. As to the in- 
dependence and separateness of these forms the tes- 
timony of Sir William Crookes ought to be suffi- 
cient for intelligent persons. In his Researches in 
the Phenomena of Spiritualism he writes : — 

" Raising the lamp (a phosphorus lamp) I looked 
round and saw Katie (the spirit form) standing 
close behind Miss Cook (the sensitive). She was 
robed in flowing white drapery, as we had seen her 
previously during the seance. Holding one of Miss 
Cook's hands in mine, and still kneeling, I passed 
the lamp up and down so as to illuminate Katie's 
whole figure and satisfy myself thoroughly that I 
was really looking at the veritable Katie whom I 
had clasped in my arms a few minutes before and 
not at the phantasm of a disordered brain. She did 
not speak, but moved her head and smiled in recog- 
nition. Three separate times did I carefully exam- 
ine Miss Cook crouching before me, to be sure that 
the hand I held was that of a living woman, and 



THE PHENOMENA 51 

three separate times did. I turn the lamp to Katie 
and examine her with steadfast scrutiny until I had 
no doubt whatever of her objective reality. " 

The entire independence and objectivity of these 
forms is further proved by photographic record. 
Pictures exhibiting both the form of the sensitive 
and that of the materialised entity, have been ob- 
tained by means of magnesium light and, more re- 
cently, under quite ordinary conditions, by day- 
light, on plates previously marked and kept under 
close observation throughout the experiment. In 
this latter case the forms may not, of course, become 
visible to the normal sight ; they are, however, often 
accurately described by clairvoyants before the ex- 
posure is made. The writer has himself obtained 
many striking pictures of this character, under good 
test conditions and attended by circumstances yield- 
ing unique and exceptionally valuable evidence. 

An interesting feature about these " semi-mate- 
rialised " beings is that, although invisible to* the 
normal sight, they appear to be capable of catching 
the sound of the audible human voice, of thoroughly 
understanding the aim and purpose of any experi- 
ment that may be suggested, and, in many instances, 
of themselves and at their own initiative, introduc- 
ing into it elements that go to demonstrate their own 
independent and objective existence. 

The doubts apparently still lingering in the minds 



52 THE PHENOMENA 

of some psychical students as to the genuineness of 
some of these abnormal photographs count for very- 
little, seeing that so very few of them can have had 
opportunities of making the experiment under really 
favourable conditions, and that the phenomenon of 
" materialisation " itself is such an exceedingly rare 
and fugitive one. The evidence in favour of some 
of these psychic pictures is as good as it is ever 
likely to be, and respecting some of those obtained 
by the present writer, expert photographic authori- 
ties have expressed their verdict. Sir William 
Crookes has obtained them in his own house under 
personally imposed conditions, and many private ex- 
perimenters in different parts of the world have 
been equally successful. 

" What are termed spirit photographs,'' wrote 
Professor A. R. Wallace some years ago * — " the 
appearance on a photographic plate of other figures 
besides those of the sitters, often those of deceased 
friends of the sitters — have now been known for 
more than twenty years. Many competent observ- 
ers have tried experiments successfully ; but the facts 
seemed too extraordinary to carry conviction to any 
but the experimenters themselves, and any allusion 
to the matter has usually been met with a smile' of 
incredulity or a confident assertion of imposture. 
It mattered not that most of the witnesses were 
experienced photographers who took precautions 
1 Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. 



THE PHENOMENA 53 

which rendered it absolutely impossible that they 
were imposed upon. The most incredible supposi- 
tions were put forth by those who had only igno- 
rance and incredulity to qualify them as judges in 
order to show that deception was possible. And 
now we have another competent witness, Mr. Traill 
Taylor, for many years editor of the British Journal 
of Photography, who, taking every precaution that 
his lifelong experience could suggest, yet obtained 
on his plates figures which, so far as normal photog- 
raphy is concerned, ought not to have been there." 

It is, unfortunately, not always possible to pre- 
sent the evidence in favour of the display of. inde- 
pendent intelligence in connection with the phenom- 
enon of materialisation in such a form as to compel 
the belief of the uninitiated or of the mere casual 
observer; but that belief is almost always created 
in the minds of those who have themselves repeat- 
edly witnessed and studied the phenomenon. These 
materialised entities will, in many instances, do 
things wholly contrary to all expectation and sug- 
gestion. They will propose experiments which 
never entered the minds of the investigators and 
which would seem to them difficult, if not impossi- 
ble, of execution. They will display a sharpness 
and intelligence and ingenuity which often leave the 
student in a perfect maze of perplexity and bewilder- 
ment, and which would seem to preclude the very 



54 THE PHENOMENA 

possibility of accounting for the phenomenon on 
purely natural and normal and subjective grounds. 
Indeed, such an explanation would suggest problems 
and difficulties greater by far than those attending 
the acceptance of the simple spirit hypothesis. 

The universal testimony of these materialised 
beings is that they are the spirits of departed men 
and women, some of whom have learnt the art of 
manipulating the delicate matter abstracted from 
the organism of a sensitive, and of shaping it into 
bodies resembling those of their past earth life, and 
that they do this for the purpose of giving evidence 
that they have survived the shock of death and are 
able, under favourable conditions, to once more en- 
ter into communion with the living. 

They further declare that this process of material- 
isation is an exceedingly difficult and complex one, 
requiring much practice and experience on their own 
part, and entire co-operation, in the shape of pas- 
sivity, on the part of the sensitive. They also insist 
that, inasmuch as the substance of the form is taken 
from the sensitive, it will, in most instances, and 
especially in first materialisations, bear a resem- 
blance to the sensitive's own form and features, the 
suspicion of fraud on the latter's part, being a natu- 
ral and very frequent consequence. This resem- 
blance to the sensitive only disappears, they explain, 
as the experiment is repeated, as the controlling in- 
telligence better learns the art of manipulating the 



THE PHENOMENA 55 

" substance," and in proportion as it is able to re- 
call to its memory the picture of the form which it 
once inhabited in its past earth life. And this ex- 
planation certainly must be admitted to be entirely 
in keeping with the circumstances which have been 
found to attend the development of this peculiar 
phenomenon. 

There is, however, abundant evidence to show 
that the intelligences manipulating the delicate psy- 
chic substance are capable of moulding it into any 
shape or form, according to the thought-pictures of 
a deceased relative that may be in the mind of one 
of the sitters or of the psychic, or that may in other 
unknown ways be within their reach. This aspect 
of the subject will receive further and fuller treat- 
ment in another portion of this volume. 

SUBJECTIVE PHENOMENA 

There is a series of occult phenomena to which 
this designation may be given in order to distin- 
guish them from those distinctly external and ob- 
jective manifestations of which a brief description 
has been given in the preceding section. 

They are subjective in the sense that, while in the 
phenomena just described, the operating intelligence 
would seem to be acting outside the bodily organ- 
ism of the sensitive, the operations are here carried 
on from within, the mind of the sensitive being con- 



56 THE PHENOMENA 

trolled and influenced in such a way as to become the 
means of conveying, in a quite natural and auto- 
matic manner, independent spirit communications. 

It is not here contended that these subjective man- 
ifestations are in every case due to extraneous and 
independent " spirit-control." . On the contrary, it 
is emphatically asserted that in very many instances 
the apparent " control " is due to an abnormal ac- 
tion of the sensitive's own mind, a phenomenon very 
apt to be induced by a frequent repetition of the ex- 
periment, and in some cases very closely resembling 
the independent phenomenon. A fuller treatment 
of this aspect of the subject will be found on page 88. 

There can be very little doubt, however, that the 
purely natural automatic action develops frequently 
into a stage at which, by reason of increased mind- 
passivity, independent spirit-control takes place, and 
at which the peculiar mental condition thus culti- 
vated is made to serve the purposes of outside and 
extraneous intelligence. This change in the nature 
and character of the phenomenon generally becomes 
apparent from the character and tenour of the com- 
munications which are being conveyed by this means 
and it may be so gradual and subtle and impercep- 
tible that it may be extremely difficult for the inex- 
perienced to determine where natural automatic ac- 
tion ceases and independent spirit-action begins. 
There are instances in which both are in operation at 
the same time or where the one is incessantly alter- 



THE PHENOMENA 57 

nating with the other. Much depends upon the fre- 
quency with which the experiment is resorted to, 
much upon the state of the health of the sensitive, 
all upon the extent to which mind-passivity has been 
cultivated. 

Without here entering upon the question of how 
far a certain degree of clairvoyance and clairaudi- 
ence may be considered an extension of natural fac- 
ulty, or perhaps manifestations of abnormal brain 
and nerve conditions at present but very imperfectly 
understood, experience teaches constantly that both 
are apt to make their appearance in persons who 
have, by frequently repeated experiments, passed 
through certain stages of " development " and who 
have consciously or unconsciously cultivated an ha- 
bitually passive state of the mind. Such persons 
will, in the course of time, and while remaining in 
an apparently normal condition, begin to hear 
sounds and see things which are not perceptible to 
the ordinary mind and intelligence, and it is from 
the extraordinary character of some of these abnor- 
mal sights and sounds that we must conclude that 
they are not always hallucinations of a morbid or 
partially disordered brain. 

A " developed " sensitive will thus correctly de- 
scribe objects placed in some hidden part of another 
house or locality. He will give an accurate account 
of scenes and events occurring at a distance. He 
will read writing folded up and enclosed in an 



58 THE PHENOMENA 

opaque envelope. Or, if exceptionally strong, he 
will develop yet another degree of psychic faculty. 
He will " psychometrise," as it is technically termed, 
some article placed in his hand — that is, he will 
from contact with it, construct its entire past history, 
its mode of manufacture and the persons concerned 
with it past and present, and become conscious of 
certain influences, good, evil, or indifferent, that 
may adhere to it and that may, to his sensitive per- 
ception, emanate from it. 

Or the sensitive may become clairaudient, may 
begin to hear sounds, generally those of the human 
voice speaking to him in a whisper or undertone, 
and these voices may have characteristics of their 
own, enabling him in the course of time, to distin- 
guish distinct individualities and, by a certain mental 
process of his own, to hold prolonged and intelligent 
conversations with them. 

Or these subjective phenomena may develop in 
the direction of " trance oratory " or of " speaking 
with tongues." Where this is the case the sensitive 
would seem to pass into a state of semi-conscious- 
ness, easily induced after frequent and prolonged 
practice, and in proportion to the degree of mind- 
passivity attained by him, exhibit evidence of super- 
normal powers and of independent and extraneous 
spirit-action. In this state the sensitive, although 
perhaps a person of little education and intellectu- 
ally very poorly equipped, will discourse connectedly 



THE PHENOMENA 59 

and even brilliantly on some abstruse subject on 
which he could not possibly have gained any intelli- 
gent knowledge in the ordinary way. He will 
exhibit marvellous powers of argument, of repartee, 
of deep insight into human character, and display 
all the gifts ordinarily associated with a well-trained, 
disciplined, and in every sense superior human in- 
tellect. In most instances, of course, the informa- 
tion or knowledge thus displayed and intelligently 
presented does not transcend the intellectual sphere 
in which the sensitive habitually moves, and sub- 
conscious mind-action, now so much better under- 
stood, may account for and explain the entire phe- 
nomenon. All experienced occultists, however, 
agree that this does not cover the whole ground, and 
that occasionally at least, knowledge is conveyed and 
information given which could not by any possible 
stretch of the imagination have been normally ac- 
quired or been absorbed by either the conscious or 
the subconscious mind of the sensitive. And, unless 
we adopt the infinitely more cumbrous and incon- 
ceivable theory of unconscious telepathic intercourse 
between the minds of the sensitive and those of the 
living and the dead, a thing which has never been 
experimentally proved, we are driven to the conclu- 
sion that, in this phenomenon too, extraneous spirit- 
intelligence is occasionally acting and a certain form 
of spirit-possession is taking place. This is perhaps 
most marked in those cases in which the sensitive 



60 THE PHENOMENA 

suddenly speaks in a language which he could not 
have normally acquired, of which fragments even 
could not have been incidentally heard by him and 
perhaps absorbed by the subconscious mind, but 
which he nevertheless uses in an apt and intelligent 
way. 

There are other subjective forms of psychic de- 
velopment to which reference need not be made here, 
since they may all be accounted for by the action of 
the subconscious mind, and have no direct bearing 
upon the problem here under consideration. 

Amongst orthodox psychologists many of the 
subjective phenomena here described are unfor- 
tunately still regarded as symptomatic of certain 
forms of mental aberration, and many an unfortu- 
nate sensitive only too frequently still finds his way 
into the lunatic asylum. But there are everywhere 
increasing signs that in this sphere of research great 
reactions and transformations of ideas are at hand, 
and that saner and more rational methods of treat- 
ment will prevail before long. It must be clear that, 
admitting the presence and action of extraneous 
spirit intelligence, facilitated by the development of 
a peculiarly receptive and passive mind state, the at- 
mosphere of a madhouse is the very worst environ- 
ment amidst which a sensitive could possibly be 
placed, and that a mistaken and antiquated diagnosis 
of his case is bound to aggravate his condition, and 
to practically make his case a hopeless one. It is 



THE PHENOMENA 61 

probably true that in cases in which the sensitive 
has reached a very high degree of " development," 
and in which the subconscious mind would seem to 
have passed beyond the control of the healthy nor- 
mal self, thus throwing him permanently and con- 
stantly open to invasion and control from the super- 
normal world, the mental equilibrium is never 
wholly restored, and the sensitive remains perma- 
nently and hopelessly insane. These, however, are 
exceptional cases. In most instances an intelligent 
knowledge of the origin and character of the phe- 
nomenon, and a treatment based on such knowledge 
and consistently carried out, will be found effective 
in securing a rapid and permanent cure. 



Ill 

THE SENSITIVE 

IN the preceding paragraphs some light has al- 
ready incidentally been thrown upon the rela- 
tion in which the sensitive stands to the phenomena. 
He serves, roughly speaking, as a link between 
the world of spirit and that of matter, and supplies 
from his nerve organism that substance, or " psy- 
chic force'' (as Sir William Crookes terms it), 
which enables a spirit intelligence to manifest itself 
in the world of sense. To thoroughly understand 
the modus operandi employed in the induction of a 
spirit manifestation is to understand the use and 
need of the sensitive. It is claimed that the spirit- 
ual intelligence is there, that it is both able and will- 
ing to communicate with incarnate intelligence, but 
that it is hindered from doing so by the conditions 
which govern its state. It has no material body 
wherewith to make itself seen and felt. It can only, 
as the theosophists put it, " function on the astral 
plane." There is, however, in incarnate man, a 
kind of vital force, or nerve substance, material in 
its nature, and yet more ethereal and refined than 
the gross matter composing the physical body, and 

62 



THE SENSITIVE 63 

this refined matter can be so manipulated by the 
spirit-intelligence as to cause perceptible impressions, 
of various kinds, in the material world, and to ex- 
hibit a variety of other independent and objective 
manifestations. It may, under certain conditions, 
be abstracted from persons peculiarly constituted 
and prepared to undergo a process of spirit-manipu- 
lation and " development," and it is readily yielded 
when such persons are in a condition of mental and 
physical passivity — shut away, as it were, from the 
ordinary life and environments of the world of 
sense. It is most abundantly set free in the state 
of trance and of entire insensibility. 

" Under certain conditions," writes Professor A. 
R. Wallace, 1 " disembodied spirit is able to form for 
itself a visible body out of the emanation from liv- 
ing bodies in proper magnetic relation to itself ; and 
under certain still more favourable conditions, this 
body can be made tangible. Thus all the phenom- 
ena of mediumship take place. Gravity is overcome 
by a form of life-magnetism, induced between the 
spirit and the medium : visible heads or visible bodies 
are produced, which sometimes write, or draw, or 
even speak. Thus departed friends come to com- 
municate with those still living, so at the moment of 
death the spirit appears visibly and sometimes tan- 
gibly to the loved ones in a distant land. All these 
phenomena would take place far more frequently 

1 Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, pp. 199, no. 



64 THE SENSITIVE 

were the conditions that alone render communica- 
tion possible more general or more cultivated." 

That this is really the modus operandi employed 
in the elicitation of spirit manifestations, is evident 
from the unanimous statements of the intelligences 
themselves, and also from certain physical tests and 
experiments. The intelligences will, for instance, 
fix upon some person who, in their opinion, is best 
qualified to become a useful sensitive. They will 
give intelligent and elaborate instructions as to the 
best method of " developing" his psychic force. 
This has reference, not merely to the mode in which 
the experiments are to be conducted, but to the 
daily life and doings of the sensitive himself, in- 
volving sometimes the most minute directions as to 
food, air, general environment, etc. They will, to 
put it briefly, carry on a consistent and systematic 
training or education, teaching the sensitive how to 
part with the largest possible amount of psychic 
force with the least possible loss of vital strength 
and energy, and how to become in other respects a 
pliable and efficient medium or instrument in their 
hands. 

And the care thus exercised will be a constant 
and a watchful one. The intelligences will, for in- 
stance, exclude from a proposed experiment any 
individual, in their opinion likely to injuriously af- 
fect the sensitive; they will arrange all the condi- 



THE SENSITIVE 65 

tions under which the experiment is to be conducted, 
and they will sometimes terminate it abruptly or 
suggest periods of repose if the expenditure of force 
seems to them to be too great a strain upon the sen- 
sitive's mental or nervous organism. And this con- 
stant watchful care would seem to indicate an ac- 
curate knowledge on their part of the nature and 
source of the peculiar power thus placed at their 
disposal, and of the conditions under which it may 
most effectually and at the same time most econom- 
ically be expended and manipulated. Thus we read 
in one of Dr. Hodgson's reports on the " Trance 
Phenomena of Mrs. Piper," printed in the Proceed- 
ings of the Society for Psychical Research: — 

" Imperator (a spirit-intelligence) claimed that 
the indiscriminate experimenting with Mrs. Piper's 
organism should stop, that it was a ' battered and 
worn ' machine; that he, with his assistants (Rector 
and Doctor) should repair it as far as possible and 
that in the meantime other persons must be kept 
away." 

The late Mr. Stainton-Moses (m.a. Oxon.), at one 
time a clergyman of the Church of England and in 
later years one of the most remarkable and powerful 
sensitives known in the history of modern spiritism, 
on one occasion received the following message 
from his spirit guides : — 



66 THE SENSITIVE 

" Be wary of the future for many reasons. Your 
greater development, which is rapid and progressive, 
will render you more and more amenable to spiritual 
influence of all kinds. Such spirits (undeveloped) 
will approach you, and by sitting you facilitate their 
entry to your circle. . . . Try to bring to' the 
circle a patient and passive mind." x 

But there are other reasons for believing that the 
modus operandi indicated is really the process which 
is employed in the elicitation of modern spirit mani- 
festations. 

There is, in the first place, the photographic evi- 
dence, which is of a striking and certainly uniform 
character. In recent times remarkable results have 
been obtained by the employment of the camera in 
connection with occult research and the importance 
and value of these results cannot be too highly esti- 
mated by those who have accurate and intimate 
acquaintance with the subject. 

All really experienced investigators know that, in 
the presence of certain sensitives and under favour- 
able conditions, photographs of materialised forms 
can be and have been obtained under circumstances 
that can leave no doubt on any reasonable mind. 
But what is perhaps of still greater importance in 
this connection is the record of the progressive evo- 
lution of these forms which some of these photo- 

1 Spirit Teaching, p. 164. 



THE SENSITIVE 67 

graphs exhibit .in a very striking degree. White 
masses of material, surrounding and in some in- 
stances entirely enveloping and concealing the sit- 
ters, may thus be traced in various stages of devel- 
opment, manifestly aiming at, and in some instances 
culminating ultimately in, the formation of a shape 
resembling the human form. 

When the sensitive is a strong one, and all the 
conditions are favourable, such a distinctly human 
form is thus finally obtained on the photographic 
plate; when the sensitive is, on the other hand, but 
an indifferent one, and the conditions are unfavour- 
able, the experiment is rendered abortive, and the 
psychic substance remains a mere unshapely mass, 
with some little approach perhaps here and there 
to- the outline of a human form, or face. 

But these abortive experiments are perhaps in 
some respects of higher evidential value than the 
successful ones, since they go to show that the ac- 
cepted spiritistic notion respecting the existence of 
the psychic substance and its manipulation by inde- 
pendent intelligence is a correct one, and that it must 
be accepted as a working principle if correct ideas 
are to be formed as to the origin and character of 
the phenomena. 

There is, in the second place, the evidence ob- 
tained from the variation in the weight of the sen- 
sitive before and after materialisation. The writer 
cannot speak from personal experience on this point, 



68 THE SENSITIVE 

but in the literature of modern English and foreign 
spiritism there are many references to this extraor- 
dinary phenomenon which, in some instances, would 
seem to have been observed under good test condi- 
tions. He is under the impression that it has been 
studied in the case of the medium Home, and that 
Sir William Crookes has experimented in this direc- 
tion. Of the medium Eglinton it is asserted that, 
during a successful materialisation, his clothes 
seemed to merely hang upon his body, and that they 
appeared to be quite a size too large for him. 

We have further proof of the correctness of the 
spiritistic theory respecting the origin of the phe- 
nomena in the symptoms universally known and 
admitted to attend the withdrawal of the psychic 
substance from the sensitive. These symptoms 
could scarcely be conceived to result from hallucina- 
tion or auto-suggestion, or from natural nerve or 
brain fatigue, seeing that they sometimes continue 
for days and weeks, and that in many instances they 
seriously and permanently affect the constitution 
of the sensitive. 

What this psychic substance which can thus be 
extracted and manipulated by intelligence precisely 
is, from what portion of the body it is chiefly with- 
drawn, what other elements are superadded to it, 
we have no means whatever of determining. Ex- 
perience would seem to point to the brain as the 
organ from which the largest contribution is apt to 



THE SENSITIVE 69 

be exacted. Most sensitives suffer from brain ex- 
haustion, and sometimes from a severe and irritat- 
ing pain at the top of the spine after a prolonged and 
successful experiment, and almost all professional 
sensitives undergo, in the course of time, a gradual 
but very perceptible diminution of mental and phys- 
ical vigour. Many of them suffer from chronic 
prostration and nerve debility, and it is with a view 
to moderating the demand made upon the nervous 
organism that the familiar " circle " is constructed, 
and that every effort is made to establish what is 
termed favourable or harmonious " conditions." 
Such conditions, i.e. the presence of persons thor- 
oughly in sympathy with spiritistic aims and with 
the sensitive, and, by a passive attitude of mind and 
of body, contributing their share to the psychic sub- 
stance required for the elicitation of the phenomena, 
would seem to insure the least amount of injury to 
the sensitive and the largest amount of success as 
regards the experiment. 

That there is, however, in the induction of the 
objective phenomena, and under the most favour- 
able circumstances, a serious drain upon the vital 
powers of both sensitive and sitters, would seem to 
be conclusively established from the universal testi- 
mony of experienced spiritists and from that of 
modern scientific students of the subject. 

In the writings of Mr. Cromwell F. Varley, a 
Fellow of the Royal Society, and for many years 



70 THE SENSITIVE 

chief engineer of the Electric and International Tele- 
graph Company, we find the following : — 

" One of the phenomena which I experienced on 
this occasion was a great loss of power. I could 
with difficulty only support myself. I often experi- 
ence this at physical seances, and to such an extent 
that for years I have been obliged to abstain from 
them altogether." 

Speaking of the effect of the phenomenon of 
" automatic writing," Mr. Stainton-Moses wrote 1 : 

" The hand tingled and the arm throbbed, and 
I was conscious of waves of force surging through 
me. When the message was done I was prostrate 
with exhaustion, and suffered from a violent head- 
ache at the base of the brain. Asking the cause, they 
(the spirits) said: ' Headache was result of inten- 
sity of the power and the rapidity with which it was 
withdrawn from you. We could not write on such 
a subject without displaying eagerness, for it is one 
of most vital concern to those to whom we are 
sent/ " 

In " Extracts from Mr. Moses' Private Note- 
Book," published by Mr. Myers in vol. xxvii. of the 
Proceedings, we read the following : — 

" Catharine (a spirit) knocked very clearly and 

1 Spirit Teaching, p. 22. 



THE SENSITIVE 71 

gave some messages. At length she rapped out : 
' Look at the medium/ and ' Take care of the me- 
dium/ . . . After some time a light was struck, 
and I was discovered to have fallen down by the 
bookcase in a most awkward position and in a pro- 
found trance. My face was bathed for some time 
before any sign of revival showed, and then I could 
not stand, but slipped down in a helpless way. My 
legs could not support my body, and my hands could 

not hold anything. Dr. S walked home with 

me, and he says that I could not have walked at all 
alone." 

Mr. D. D. Home, when giving evidence before a 
committee of the London Dialectical Society, said, 
in reply to the question, " What are your sensations 
when in a trance ? " : — 

" I feel for two or three minutes in a dreamy 
state, and then I become quite dizzy, and then I 
lose all consciousness. When I awake I find my feet 
and limbs quite cold, and it is difficult to restore cir- 
culation. When told of what has taken place in 
the trance it is quite unpleasant to me, and I ask 
those present not to tell me at once when I awake." 

In reply to a question as to the difference between 
manifestations in and out of trance Mr. Home re- 
plied : — 

" In a trance I see spirits connected with persons 



J2 THE SENSITIVE 

present. These spirits take possession of me; my 
voice is like theirs. I have a particularly mobile 
face, as you may see, and I sometimes take a sort 
of identity with the spirits who are in communica- 
tion through me. I attribute the mobility of my 
face, which is not natural, to the spirits. I may say 
that I am exceedingly sick after elongations." 

There are, it must be admitted, some cases on 
record in which a. developed sensitive has exercised 
his abnormal powers for a long period of years with- 
out any apparent loss of physical stamina, and such 
cases are apt to be cited as illustrating the truth of 
the spiritistic contention that the exercise of medi- 
umship is not necessarily attended by disastrous 
physical consequences : that it is to its abuse rather 
than to its use that they may in most cases be at- 
tributed. It is certain, however, that such instances 
are the exception and not the rule, and they may be 
accounted for by quite exceptional circumstances, 
which it is not easy to secure under the ordinary 
conditions of life, and which can never be secured 
in the case of professional sensitives. 

When a person finds himself in easy material 
circumstances and possessed of a robust constitu- 
tion, when he lives a careful and well-regulated life 
and is comparatively free from its common worries 
and fatigues, when he uses great care and discretion 
in the selection of the sitters and in the general 
conduct of the experiment, when long experience has 



THE SENSITIVE 73 

taught him how to husband the nervous energy 
expended and, by rest and food and change of air, 
to rapidly replace what has been lost, it is very prob- 
able that the risks to life and constitution are re- 
duced to a minimum, and that health and strength 
may be preserved for a long period of years. 

It is equally certain, however, that even under 
such exceptionally favourable conditions a drain 
upon the vital powers takes place, and that energy 
is expended which no amount of care will ever re- 
place. This is evident from the statements of the 
intelligences themselves, who always readily admit 
that they can never entirely put back what they have 
abstracted from the organism, and also from the cir- 
cumstance that such sensitives too will for months, 
and even years, suspend all their spiritistic experi- 
ments and will resist all attempt on the part of the 
intelligence to manifest and to enter into communi- 
cation with them. 

In the case of professional sensitives the fact is so 
transparent and so very generally known and ad- 
mitted in spiritistic circles, that nothing further 
need be said on the subject. " As a rule I have," 
writes Professor Barrett, " observed the steady 
downward course of mediums who sit regularly." 

Many of them, for this very reason, look upon 
themselves as willing martyrs in the cause of science 
and of truth; many ascribe their troubles to the 
senseless demands made upon them by an unreason- 



74 THE SENSITIVE 

ing public and by the misdirected zeal of enthusiastic 
but, in many instances, not very humane scientists. 
As already pointed out, . all the abnormal phe- 
nomena indicating the action of extraneous intelli- 
gence and, in the case of some of them, involving 
the abstraction of a certain nerve force from the 
organism of the sensitive, are most successfully 
induced while the sensitive is in a state of trance or 
complete insensibility. In most instances this state 
is induced after a prolonged and systematic process 
of " development " ; but it has been known to occur 
after only two* or three very ordinary experiments, 
and simply as a consequence of creating " favour- 
able conditions." Under such favourable condi- 
tions the spirit-intelligence would seem to operate 
with the greatest possible freedom, and a developed 
sensitive would seem to become a mere passive 
agent in their hands. Thus when the sensitive and 
the sitters become conscious of the approach of the 
trance state, and perhaps give expression to some 
feeling of alarm or misgiving, assuring messages 
will at once be given to them, and it will be ex- 
plained that complete unconsciousness will not only 
secure the success of the experiment, but also the 
entire well-being of the sensitive. " We are putting 
him to sleep because his mind is too active and we 
cannot work," or " we will take care of him, have 
no fear," are familiar instructions of this character, 
and it must be admitted that such intimations gen- 



THE SENSITIVE 75 

erally fit in with the circumstances of the case and 
intelligently explain many of the phenomena attend- 
ing the experiment. 

With most sensitives the spirit manifestations will- 
develop easily and rapidly when the trance is deep I 
and complete, while they will be broken and fitful 
and imperfect when it is only partial and super- 
ficial, or when the sensitive resists its induction by 
some mental action of his own. It is further a mat- 
ter of common experience with all developed sensi- 
tives that the psychic force necessary for the pro- 
duction of the objective phenomena is withdrawn 
most easily, and with the least possible injury to 
health, while the sensitive is in a state of complete 
insensibility. Mind-passivity, indeed, would seem 
to be the keynote of all spiritistic experiment, and 
the condition by which the spirit-world most ef- 
fectively carries on its operations on the physical 
plane. 

In what precise way the intelligences operate in 
order to bring about this complete insensibility which 
renders the sensitive an obedient instrument in their 
hands, can of course be a matter of conjecture and 
speculation only, but it seems probable that the 
method adopted by them is not unlike the hypnotic 
one, and that the effect is chiefly produced by sug- 
gestion. The physical manifestations attending the 
induction of the trance state do not help us much 
in determining this matter. In the case of some 



y6 THE SENSITIVE 

sensitives, and especially in that of those who have 
passed through a prolonged process of " develop- 
ment/' it comes on easily and. readily, and but few 
external symptoms can be recorded as attending it. 
It is in many respects similar to that of natural 
sleep, or of the ordinary hypnotic trance. In other 
sensitives, and especially in persons submitting to 
the process but occasionally, and perhaps not very 
willingly, both the induction of the state and re- 
covery from it, are accompanied by some well- 
marked and in some instances certainly very re- 
pulsive manifestations. " Mrs. Piper's recovery 
from the trance state/' writes a spectator, " was 
perhaps the most shocking sight I ever witnessed." 
" Gasps, peculiar rattling in the throat, face very 
much distorted," were, we are told by another, some 
of the physical accompaniments of the process. It 
can, of course, well be imagined that, admitting the 
existence of the operating spirit-intelligence, and its 
attempt, by means of the mind-passivity of the sensi- 
tive, to manifest itself, the phenomenon attending 
the operation would vary according to the general 
mental temperament of the sensitive and the degree 
in which he consciously or unconsciously assists or 
resists the operation. 

The sensations experienced by the sensitive upon 
recovery from the trance state are described as 
similar to those attending the sudden awakening 
from an exceptionally profound natural sleep. He 



THE SENSITIVE 77 

feels dazed and confused and bewildered, and is in- 
coherent in both thought and speech, and there is 
a general lethargic state of the mind which may 
continue for hours and even days. In most in- 
stances he has no knowledge whatever of what has 
taken place during the continuation of the trance, 
and expresses a keen desire to learn from the sitters 
what the character of the manifestations has 
been. 

One very serious consequence, not often referred 
to in spiritistic writings, is apt to follow upon the 
habitual and systematic induction of the trance state. 
It is a tendency, on the part of the sensitive, to pass 
into it imperceptibly at all times and places and 
upon the smallest possible provocation — to entirely 
lose the power of exercising any kind of control 
over the phenomenon. A mere reference to the 
subject of spiritism, the reading of a book con- 
nected with it, the incidental remark of a friend may 
bring it about, and may place the sensitive in a 
position of the greatest possible annoyance and in- 
convenience — not to mention those dangers of a 
moral character necessarily attending such a con- 
dition of helplessness and of loss of self-control. 
Indeed such a fully developed sensitive may, after a 
time, exhibit symptoms strongly indicative of what 
is known as possession or obsession, or at any rate 
of permanent abnormal will-control of some kind, 
and his condition may ultimately become a truly 



78 THE SENSITIVE 

miserable and pitiable one, in many instances ter- 
minating in complete mental and physical collapse, 
and not infrequently in the asylum. 

In these cases the will, so long and so habitually 
held in abeyance or submitted to extraneous intelli- 
gence, would seem to entirely lose the power of 
acting and of asserting itself, the sensitive thus 
laying himself permanently open to impressions and 
control from the spirit-world. 

The intellectual faculties too, may, in the same 
way and by the same process, become impaired after 
a time, and the sensitive, losing the power of co- 
ordinating his thoughts, and of accurately dis- 
tinguishing the source from which they flow, may 
come to habitually act upon suggestions made either 
by the action of his own disordered subconscious 
mind, or by that of spirit-intelligences in rapport 
with him. In all these instances the sensitive would 
exhibit all the signs and symptoms commonly held 
to be symptomatic of mind-aberration and insanity. 

The late Mr. Myers had, as is well known, de- 
voted many years of patient study, under excep- 
tionally favourable circumstances, to these various 
abnormal conditions of human personality, and had 
become fully convinced that, while in very many 
instances subjective mind-action must be admitted 
to explain the phenomenon, genuine and inde- 
pendent spirit-control most undoubtedly takes place 
in others. 






THE SENSITIVE 79 

In his recently published book 1 we read the fol- 
lowing : — 

"The claim, then, is, that the automatist (i. e. 
the medium who writes or speaks in an apparent 
state of trance), in the first place, falls into a 
trance, during which his spirit partially * quits the 
body ' ; enters, at any rate, into a state in which 
the spiritual world is more or less open to its per- 
ception, and in which also — and this is the nov- 
elty — it so far ceases to occupy the organism as 
to leave room for an invading spirit to use it in 
somewhat the same fashion as its owner is accus- 
tomed to use it. 

" The brain being thus left temporarily and 
partially uncontrolled, a disembodied spirit some- 
times, but not always, succeeds in occupying it, and 
occupies it with varying degree of control. In some 
cases (Mrs. Piper) two or more spirits may simul- 
taneously control different portions of the same 
organism. 

" The controlling spirit proves his identity mainly 
by reproducing in speech or writing facts which 
belong to his memory and not to the automatist' s 
memory. He may also give evidence of super- 
normal perception of other kinds. 

" His manifestations may differ very considerably 
from the automatisms normal personality. Yet in 
1 Human Personality. 






8o THE SENSITIVE 

one sense it is a process of selection rather than of 
addition; the spirit selects what parts of the brain 
machinery he will use, but he cannot get out of that 
machinery more than it is constructed to perform. 
The spirit can, indeed, produce facts and names un- 
known to the automatist; but they must be, as a 
rule, such facts and names as the automatist could 
easily have repeated had they been known to him — 
not, for instance, mathematical formulae or Chinese 
sentences, if the automatist is ignorant of mathe- 
matics or of Chinese. 

" After a time the control gives way, and the 
automatisms spirit returns. The automatist, awak- 
ening, may or may not remember his experiences in 
the spiritual world during the trance. In some 
cases (Swedenborg) there is this memory of the 
spiritual world, but no possession of the organism 
by an external spirit. In others (Cahagnet's sub- 
ject) there is utterance during the trance as to what 
is being discerned by the automatist, yet no memory 
thereof on waking. In others (Mrs. Piper) there 
is neither utterance as a rule, or, at least, no pro- 
longed utterance, by the automatist's own spirit, nor 
subsequent memory; but there is writing or utter- 
ance during the trance by controlling spirits." 

In vol. xxviii. p. 311 of the Proceedings a very 
interesting and graphic description is given of the 
sensations which are experienced in connection with 



THE SENSITIVE 81 

some of these subjective manifestations. A Mr. 
Charles Hill Tout writes : — 

" After about half an hour I felt a strange sensa- 
tion stealing over me. I seemed to be undergoing 
a change of personality. I seemed to have, as it 
were, stepped aside, and some other intelligence was 
now controlling my organism. I was merely a 
passive spectator interested in what was being done. 
My second self seemed to be a mother overflowing 
with feelings of maternal love and solicitude for 
someone. The very features of my face seemed 
to be changing, and I was distinctly conscious of 
assuming the look of a fond and devoted mother 
looking down upon her child. I even inwardly 
smiled as I thought how ridiculous I must be look- 
ing, but I made no effort to resist the impulse. I 
now felt I wanted to caress and console somebody, 
and the impulse was strong upon me to take my 
friend in my arms and to soothe and cheer him. 
I resisted the impulse for a time, but finally yielded 
to it. In doing so I had a distinct feeling of rela- 
tionship to my friend. After a little time I became 
myself again. My friend was confident that I had 
been influenced by the spirit of his dead mother, as 
he had had a distinct impression of her presence 
at the time." 

In view of occurrences and experiences of this 



82 THE SENSITIVE 

kind, and of the peculiar circumstances attending 
them, of which it is so difficult to give an accurate 
account to> the outsider, it will be found to be no 
easy matter to set aside the spiritistic contention 
that the " subliminal mind " theory, even if stretched 
to its utmost limits, does not cover the whole 
ground, but that independent spirit-action must be 
admitted in connection with a certain proportion of 
them. And this most certainly applies to all the 
distinctly subjective manifestations, such as auto- 
matic writing, clairvoyance, and clairaudience, psy- 
chometry, speaking with tongues, etc. The spirit- 
istic theory, at any rate — - the passive mind of the 
sensitive acting in conjunction with extraneous 
spirit-intelligence, according to the degree of passiv- 
ity attained and of consequent rapport established 
— provides us with the best and most adequate ex- 
planation of the perplexing phenomena which have 
been observed in connection with these manifesta- 
tions. It is this theory alone which enables us to 
understand why it is that while a spirit-message is 
perhaps to a certain extent quite intelligible and 
consistent, and there are about it certain unmis- 
takable signs of independent mind-action, there is 
nevertheless conjoined with it much that is in- 
definite, confusing, and perplexing; why a com- 
munication is clear, precise, and pointed to-day, and 
muddled, and disconnected, and wholly subconscious 
to-morrow; why the manifestations, pointing to in- 



THE SENSITIVE 83 

dependent spirit-control, are so much more conclu- 
sive with one sensitive than they are with another; 
and why, with some sensitives, there is no evidence 
for such independent action at all. It is manifestly 
at all times a question of " control," depending for 
its degree and completeness upon the mental and 
probably physical condition of the sensitive, and 
upon the extent to which mind-passivity has been 
practised and attained by him. Indeed, to the ob- 
servant student the two factors, manifestly instru- 
mental in the production of these phenomena, may 
be constantly observed to be in operation, and it is 
sometimes extremely difficult to determine where 
subconscious mind-action ceases and independent 
spirit-action begins. In some instances the natural 
would seem to be gradually and imperceptibly pass- 
ing into the preternatural; in others subconscious 
mind-action is constantly alternating with spirit- 
action or perhaps remaining the dominant factor 
throughout the experiment. 

And how strange and startling such subconscious 
mind-manifestations are sometimes apt to be is best 
known to those who are acquainted with the results 
of modern psychical and psychological research, and 
who have some knowledge of what the latent possi- 
bilities of the human mind are — what extraor- 
dinary powers and undreamt-of stores of informa- 
tion, subconsciously acquired, it has been shown to 
possess. 



84 THE SENSITIVE 

That the sensitive developing in this subjective 
direction is constantly exposing himself to dangers, 
greater even, in some respects, than those threat- 
ening the " physical medium/' must surely become 
apparent from a consideration of the circumstances 
of the case. A person who has long and success- 
fully practised mind-passivity, and who has by these 
means invited and facilitated subjective spirit inter- 
course, of necessity lays himself constantly open to 
the invasion of external intelligence and to a form 
of spirit-control which is apt to be most subtle and 
complex in its character, and of the operation of 
which he may himself remain unconscious for a con- 
siderable period of time. He may become the sub- 
ject of suggestions, impulses, and promptings, 
wholly extraneous and foreign in their character, 
and yet having to him all the appearance of quite 
normal mind-action, and consequently impelling him 
to ready and implicit obedience. The writer can- 
not help feeling that it is here that many of the 
startling and incomprehensible occurrences so con- 
stantly reported in our daily newspapers find their 
legitimate explanation, and that the innumerable 
instances of apparently sudden mind-aberration 
have their origin. The frequency of them will be 
in proportion to the extent to which planchette and 
automatic writing and the mind-passivity which 
these necessitate are cultivated, and to which the 
invasion and control of unseen spirit-intelligences is 



THE SENSITIVE 85 

thus being facilitated. " Ten thousand people," 
wrote Dr. Forbes Winslow, 1 as far back as 1877, 
" are at the present time confined in lunatic asylums 
on account of having tampered with the super- 
natural." 

It remains an undeniable fact, which increasing 
numbers of persons are at this present time dis- 
covering to their cost, that the door which by these 
various practices is apt to be so easily and readily 
opened, is not so easily and readily shut, and the 
probability is that, with developed sensitives and 
others habitually and systematically practising these 
things, that door remains permanently open. 

In any case it is fully admitted by the majority of 
spiritists, and by most experienced investigators, 
that in proportion to the degree in which mind- 
passivity is practised and development is attained, 
do the phenomena exhibit the presence and action 
of independent spirit-intelligence, and do they show 
a tendency to pass beyond the control of the sensi- 
tive. 

1 Spiritualistic Madness. 



IV 

THE INTELLIGENCE OR INTELLIGENCES 

FROM what has been said in the preceding 
chapters it will have become abundantly clear 
what the writer's personal standpoint is with respect 
to the phenomena under consideration and their 
cause and origin. An experience of many years, 
during which he has had opportunities of studying 
the subject under exceptionally favourable circum- 
stances, and in various countries, has thoroughly 
convinced him that a certain proportion of them 
is due to the intervention of intelligence, and that 
that intelligence is of an independent and extraneous 
character. 

It will also have been seen that this is, broadly 
speaking, the position taken up by a considerable 
number of experienced and scientific investigators. 

The writer further shares the conviction ex- 
pressed by Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, that 
" this belief will, at no distant date, be accepted by 
all truth-seeking inquirers." The evidence is, in 
his opinion, far too strong and many-sided to be 
resisted by the really fair and unbiased mind, or to 
be explained away by any one of those fantastic 

86 



THE INTELLIGENCES 87 

theories which scientific ingenuity and imagination 
have suggested from time to time. The difficulties 
introduced by some of these theories are, for the 
most part, infinitely greater than those which they 
are propounded to solve. 

The probability is that it is in many instances not 
really the weakness and insufficiency of the evidence 
at present available which " holds " the mind of the 
conventional scientist, and which leads him to per- 
form these at times truly astonishing feats of mental 
gymnastics, but rather that well-known rationalistic 
temper and habit of thought which shrinks from 
tolerating the very notion of a spiritual world and 
of spiritual agencies and activities. 

Many modern writers on psychical subjects, too, 
have themselves no actual experimental knowledge 
of the phenomena, and merely speak from what they 
have heard and read, or from what a rooted mis- 
giving as to the credibility of any human testimony 
is only too apt to suggest to their minds. We may 
safely conclude that the attitude towards the sub- 
ject taken up by Sir William Crookes, and taken up 
by him at a time when science was practically ig- 
norant of it, and even discredited the very occur- 
rence of the phenomena, will be the ultimate attitude 
of all educated thought when the subject is equally 
well known and understood. 

The only theory, besides the spiritistic one, which 
may be said to occupy the field and to deserve any 



88 THE INTELLIGENCES 

serious consideration in the attempt to interpret the 
phenomena under examination, is the one which is 
based upon certain abnormal operations of the 
human mind, and which is now very generally 
known as the subliminal mind theory. 

Psychical research has, in recent times, occupied 
itself very extensively with the problems presented 
by these mental operations, and the evidence which 
has been furnished has thrown a vast amount of 
light upon the subject. The human mind is, it ap- 
pears, an infinitely more complex and mysterious 
organism than had hitherto been supposed, and, in 
certain abnormal states, it would seem to exhibit 
manifestations which have a very direct and vital 
bearing upon the problems here under consideration. 

It is thus asserted by psychologists of the mod- 
ern school that a variety of experiments have gone 
to show that there is going on beneath the threshold 
of our ordinary waking consciousness, a secondary 
and far more mysterious process of mind-action, 
and that this secondary process is, in many respects, 
entirely distinct from and independent of the pri- 
mary one. Man, to put it briefly, and in the lan- 
guage of some recent writers, would seem to be 
possessed of two minds, each having its own par- 
ticular sphere of operations, and performing its own 
particular and distinctive functions. 

The terms at present employed in describing these 
mysterious processes of mind-action are, of course, 



THE INTELLIGENCES 89 

provisional and tentative terms only, and they may 
hereafter have to experience considerable modifica- 
tions ; but they are, no doubt, exceedingly useful and 
serviceable terms for accurately describing what 
experience and observation have so far shown to 
be actually taking place. 

It was the late Mr. Frederick W. H. Myers who 
had made this particular sphere of psychical research 
his own, and it is the terminology adopted by him 
which has become the received and most popular one 
in psychical circles. For a fuller and critical study 
of the subject the reader is referred to Mr. Myers' 
interesting articles on " The Subliminal Conscious- 
ness," which were published in succeeding issues of 
the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search in 1893. Mr. Myers' conclusions may be 
briefly summed up in his own words as follows : — 

" It is . . . as it seems to me, in a field al- 
most clear of hypothesis that I suggest my own 
view : that a stream of consciousness flows on within 
us at a level beneath the threshold of the ordinary 
waking life, and that this consciousness embraces 
unknown powers of which these hypnotic phenom- 
ena give us the first sample." 

Or, to express it in the words of Dr. Milne Bram- 
well, a well-known authority on hypnotism : — 

" It can be experimentally demonstrated, not only 

7 



9 o THE INTELLIGENCES 

that the hypnotised subject possesses a secondary 
consciousness which alternates with his primary one, 
but also that it is possible for the two to co-exist and 
to manifest different phenomena simultaneously." 

In his well-known work, entitled The Law of 
Psychic Phenomena, Mr. T. Jay Hudson, an Ameri- 
can writer, gives us the following definition of these 
two distinctive mind processes : — 

" In general terms the difference between man's 
two minds may be stated as follows : — 

" The objective (or supraliminal) mind takes cog- 
nisance of the objective world. Its media of ob- 
servation are the five physical senses. It is the out- 
growth of man's physical necessities. It is his 
guide in his struggle with his material environment. 
Its highest function is that of reasoning. 

" The subjective (or subliminal) mind takes cog- 
nisance of its environments by means independent 
of the physical senses. It perceives by intuition. 
It is the seat of the emotions and the storehouse of 
memory. It performs its highest functions when 
the objective senses are in abeyance. In a word, 
it is that intelligence which makes itself manifest in 
a hypnotic subject when he is in a state of som- 
nambulism. In this state many of the most wonder- 
ful feats of the subjective mind are performed. It 
sees without the use of the natural organs of vision; 
and in this, as in many other grades, or degrees, of 



THE INTELLIGENCES 91 

the hypnotic state, it can be made, apparently, to 
leave the body, and travel to distant lands and bring- 
back intelligence, oftentimes of the most exact and 
truthful character. It also has the power to read 
the thoughts of others, even to the minutest details, 
to read the contents of sealed envelopes and of 
closed books, etc." 

For practical purposes, and in view of the ques- 
tions here under consideration, the essential prin- 
ciples of the subliminal mind theory may be briefly 
stated thus : — 

There is in the mind of man, besides the ordinary 
and known process of thought, of reasoning, reflec- 
tion, and memory, an inner, secondary, and vastly 
more complex process of mental operation inces- 
santly at work. It is, in large measure, distinct 
from and independent of the normal one, and in 
all healthy and well-balanced minds, only occasion- 
ally gives indication of its existence. 

By means of this secondary mental process, a 
system of mind registry, both accurate and perma- 
nent, is unceasingly in progress. It embraces the 
whole of our complex life. It includes every 
thought which has passed through the mind, every 
mental picture or impression received, every word 
spoken and every sound heard — anything and 
everything that has ever come within the sphere of 
either the conscious or the unconscious self. By this 



92 THE INTELLIGENCES 

merciless automatic registry, therefore, all the acts, 
words, and even thoughts of our past lives are ac- 
curately and indelibly recorded. All the things 
which we have heard, or learnt, or known, are pre- 
served and stored up — each single item in the 
whole of our complex mental, moral, and intellectual 
history is made an ever-present and permanent fact. 

Under ordinary and normal conditions this sec- 
ondary mental process would appear to keep dis- 
crete, and to make itself known to us only by an 
occasional welling over of its vast material into the 
waking consciousness, and of there translating itself 
into some of those sudden and mysterious mental 
operations which are so frequently a source of won- 
der and perplexity to us. 

In abnormal conditions of the mind, however, 
such as artificial sleep, hypnosis, the trance state, 
the existence and power of this secondary mental 
faculty would seem to become fully and demon- 
strably manifest, and to exhibit not only an entirely 
independent method of operation, but something, 
we are told, very much resembling a distinct and 
separate individuality. 

Thus this secondary, subjective, or subliminal 
consciousness may not only display a vast amount 
of independent knowledge and information on a 
variety of subjects, but also the power of weaving 
and constructing that knowledge into a consistent 
whole, and of drawing from it conclusions and in- 



THE INTELLIGENCES 93 

ferences in some instances wholly at variance with 
those drawn from the same facts by the ordinary 
normal waking mind. There may, in fact, be 
shown to be between these two streams of con- 
sciousness vital differences of opinion on very many 
of the most important questions of human life, 
pointing to two distinct and, in many respects, in- 
dependent methods of observation, of reasoning, 
and of inference. 

In what precise way and to what extent these two 
processes of thought and of mind operation act upon 
each other, how far they supplement one another, 
in what measure the subconscious process enters into 
the construction of the conscious self, it would be 
obviously difficult, if not impossible, to say. Cer- 
tain it is that this subliminal thought reservoir is, 
in all healthy and normally constituted individuals, 
under the constant control of the ordinary waking 
or " supraliminal " mind, and that it only " wells 
over," or manifests itself, when for some reason or 
other the powers of this ordinary waking mind are 
rendered inactive, and the will is held in abeyance. 

To a certain extent this, of course, takes place in 
sleep, when, as we all know, thoughts and mem- 
ories and scenes long forgotten are apt to pass 
before our mental vision, and when some of the most 
hidden things of our past lives once more come 
into view. 

The subliminal consciousness also becomes active 



94 THE INTELLIGENCES 

and more or less "independent" in states of pro- 
found reverie and abstraction, when the ordinary 
waking mind is reduced to a condition of apathy 
or vacancy or passivity, and the processes of normal 
thought are suspended. 

The blending or discreteness, as the case may be, 
of the two mental processes may also depend upon 
certain physical conditions, such as are caused by 
injury to the brain, by derangements and disorders 
of the nervous system, by prolonged mental strain 
and overwork. 

The best evidence, however, in favour of the inde- 
pendence and discreteness of the subliminal mind- 
process is obtained in hypnosis. It is there, it would 
seem, that the powers and possibilities of this sec- 
ondary stream of consciousness are most fully dis- 
closed, and that the psychologist finds himself face 
to face with problems which recent research has as 
yet only very imperfectly solved. What has been 
very fully demonstrated is the exceeding sensitive- 
ness and receptivity of the subliminal mind, its high 
susceptibility to suggestion both from within and 
from without. It would seem to be able, in re- 
sponse to such suggestion, to think things, to per- 
form acts, and to play parts which may be wholly 
out of keeping with the general character and tem- 
perament of the subject, and with all the normal 
tendencies of his waking mind. 

The conscious or supraliminal mind has never, 



THE INTELLIGENCES 95 

it would seem, a clear and accurate knowledge of 
the doings of the subliminal mind during the state 
of trance, any such impressions of what has taken 
place being, if retained at all, for the most part of a 
vague and shadowy and dream-like character. 

But the subliminal consciousness has, it is as- 
serted by some modern psychologists, yet another 
tendency or characteristic. It is apt, under certain 
abnormal conditions, to pose as an entity, wholly 
distinct and separate from the normal self, and by a 
casting of the knowledge at its disposal into dra- 
matic form, to play the part of an extraneous and 
outside intelligence. 

In spiritistic circles where the dominating thought 
is that of communion with the dead, and where this 
thought may be supposed to act as a suggestion to 
the mind of the sensitive, this part is apt to be that 
of some deceased friend or relative, respecting 
whom the mind may have an exceptional amount 
of information, and from whom a communication is 
particularly desired. 

Experiment would further seem to indicate, we 
are told, that this subliminal consciousness may, 
under certain exceptionally favourable circum- 
stances, come in telepathic contact with the minds 
of persons in psychical affinity or rapport with it, 
and may abstract from those minds, or perhaps 
passively receive from them, information or intelli- 
gence which it may manipulate in its own particular 



96 THE INTELLIGENCES 

way, and for the purpose of effectively completing 
its personation of the deceased personality. 

We have here, then, it is claimed, all the material 
necessary for the constructing of a case in favour 
of a purely natural explanation of a vast mass of 
apparently independent and so-called spiritistic phe- 
nomena. They may be accounted for by the action 
of the subliminal consciousness, operating in obe- 
dience to suggestions received from spiritistic in- 
quirers and in conjunction with the minds of the 
sitters, and producing, by a natural process of 
personation, all the appearance of independent and 
extraneous spirit-action. 

This is the position held by a considerable num- 
ber of psychical investigators at this present time, 
and even though it is fully acknowledged that, in 
the face of the known and constantly observed facts, 
this theory presents some very grave difficulties, and 
by no means covers the phenomena, it is adhered to 
on the ground that the powers and possibilities of 
the subliminal consciousness are as yet only very 
imperfectly known, and that further research and 
investigation may hereafter show them to be of an 
infinitely greater and more complex character than 
has been supposed. 

It is not necessary, for the purposes of this book, 
that this theory should be examined in detail, or 
that the evidence upon which it is constructed should 



THE INTELLIGENCES 97 

be adduced. In a sphere of research where such 
vital and fundamental differences of opinion exist, 
where the opportunities for accurate and systematic 
research are so few and in so many instances lim- 
ited to manifestly morbid mind-manifestations, and 
where so much that passes for fact must be dismissed 
as pure imagination or speculation, such a task 
would be a difficult, if not indeed a hopeless one. 
The subject, moreover, has been very fully and ex- 
plicitly dealt with in the publications of the Society 
for Psychical Research and in many of the more 
recent books on Hypnotism and Occultism. 

What should be noted, however, is the circum- 
stance that some scientists of note by no means 
admit the contentions and theories of the modern 
school of psychical investigators, and that a certain 
proportion of them reject the subliminal mind the- 
ory and telepathy altogether. Dr. Alfred Russel 
Wallace himself speaks of it as " a cumbrous and 
unintelligible hypothesis which only finds favour 
with those who have been accustomed to regard the 
belief in a spirit world as unscientific, unphilosoph- 
ical, and superstitious," and Dr. Van Eeden de- 
clares that " he has found it difficult to theoretically 
contravene the opinion that neither telepathy nor 
clairvoyance exists as a personal faculty but that 
all is the work of spirits." 

In his quite recently published work on Hypno- 
tism: Its History, Practice, and Theory, Dr. Milne 



98 THE INTELLIGENCES 

Bramwell (probably the greatest modern authority 
on this subject) writes as to telepathy : — 

" A small group — mainly comprised of men 
who had distinguished themselves in one or more 
branches of science — who claimed to have investi- 
gated the alleged phenomena by scientific methods, 
have asserted its existence. Amongst these may be 
cited the late Professor Henry Sidgwick, Freder- 
ick Myers, Edmund Gurney, and Dr. A. T. Myers. 
Although their experiments were carefully con- 
ducted, it is doubtful whether all possible sources of 
error were excluded; and I am unable to accept 
them as conclusive" (pp. 141-2). 

Again, after giving several instances of the work 
of the Society, Dr. Bramwell says : — 

" As already stated, although successful telepathic 
experiments were formerly reported by several 
members of the Society for Psychical Research, 
these have not been confirmed by later observers " 
(p. 469). 

These three references alone will suffice to indi- 
cate how widely the best-informed minds differ on 
this subject, and how impossible it is, in this sphere 
of research, to adduce anything that may be re- 
garded as incontestable and universally admitted 
fact, and upon which as a consequence a legitimate 
and rational argument may be constructed. 



THE INTELLIGENCES 99 

It is fully admitted, however, that in its more 
reasonable and moderate sense, the subliminal mind 
theory is rinding increasing favour with psychical 
investigators, and that even though the terminology 
at present adopted be an unsatisfactory one and one 
scarcely commending itself to accurate thinkers, 
many of the facts which that terminology is de- 
signed to express can scarcely be disputed. 

The main purpose of this book may, therefore, 
perhaps best be served by accepting the general 
principles of this theory, and by briefly inquiring 
how far it may reasonably be said to cover the ab- 
normal psychical phenomena of which a description 
has been given, and a considerable portion of which 
are, in the writer's opinion, due to extraneous spirit- 
intelligence. 

In the paragraph entitled " Subjective Phenom- 
ena " (p. 55), it has already been pointed out that 
there are many apparently independent spirit-mani- 
festations which may, beyond doubt, be accounted 
for by natural automatic action, and that the sub- 
liminal consciousness, drawing upon the information 
lying latent in some portion of the complex mental 
organism of the sensitive, is the actual source from 
which many so-called spirit messages proceed. This 
would seem to apply to planchette and automatic 
writing, to some forms of clairvoyance and clairau- 
dience, to trance-speaking and to what is termed in 
spiritistic circles psychometry. The probability is 



ioo THE INTELLIGENCES 

that in many, if not in most of these manifestations, 
the subconscious mind of the sensitive is the sole 
agent in producing the phenomenon. This may, 
beyond all doubt, be said to be the case: 

1. When the information or knowledge con- 
veyed by these means can be shown not to tran- 
scend the knowledge possessed by the mind, sub and 
supra, of the sensitive. 

2. When the general character and tone of the 
communications is found to correspond with the 
mental level, degree of education, and general moral, 
and intellectual attainment of the sensitive. 

3. When there are indications that the sublim- 
inal consciousness of the sensitive, acting in obedi- 
ence to suggestions received from members of the 
circle, is creating a personation in the form of some 
deceased individuality. 

An incident of the kind constantly occurring at 
spiritistic seances may help to better explain this 
latter point. 

A person possessed of some mediumistic power 
takes a pencil in his hand or places the tips of his 
fingers upon a planchette for the purpose of eliciting 
a spirit communication. The communication is 
given and it purports to be from, let us say, a 
deceased sister of the sensitive. This sister plays 
her part with amazing consistency and perfection. 
She gives accurate answers to questions as to her 
age, her name, the cause of her sickness, her death, 



THE INTELLIGENCES 101 

the circumstances attending her funeral. She 
makes correct references to other deceased or sur- 
viving relatives; she comments upon some perhaps 
obscure occurrence or incident in her own or their 
past history. She indulges in moral reflections 
upon the transitoriness of life, the certainty and aw- 
fulness of death, the life beyond the grave, of which 
her presence and communication give convincing 
and satisfactory evidence. She even volunteers in- 
formation with a view to excluding the very possi- 
bility of subconscious mind-action on the part of 
the sensitive. In brief, she conveys to the sensitive, 
and to those assisting at the experiment, the impres- 
sion of an independent living and acting person- 
ality. 

But, unless there be evidence of an additional and 
very different character, there would manifestly be 
no valid reason for accepting such a condition, since, 
on the grounds of subconscious mind-action, the 
following process may be shown to be at work, and 
to adequately account for the phenomenon. 

The sensitive starts with belief in the possibility 
of spirit communion, and with the intention of ob- 
taining, if possible, a message from the dead. This 
thought acts as a powerful suggestion to the mind, 
rapidly passing into a state of passivity. The sub- 
liminal consciousness, beginning to take control, 
seizes hold of and assimilates this thought. It has 
hidden away in its storehouse a vast amount of 



io2 THE INTELLIGENCES 

latent knowledge of the sensitive's friends and rela- 
tives, and it is, of course, fully aware of the fact 
that it is from a deceased sister that a communica- 
tion is most earnestly desired — ■ or it may be that it 
is of the sister that its information is most complete 
and accurate. With its natural tendency to dra- 
matic personation it readily slips into the part of 
this sister, impersonates her with the aid of the 
knowledge at its disposal, and for the time being, 
and in consequence of suggestion, thoroughly iden- 
tifies itself with her. It has access, of course, to 
the knowledge of the supraliminal mind, too, and, 
let us assume, to some knowledge in the minds of 
some of the sisters, and it is consequently able to 
play its part to perfection. Its answers to questions 
are startling and unexpected, and, being in a meas- 
ure based upon information latent in the subliminal 
consciousness only and not remembered by the su- 
praliminal mind, they have all the appearance of 
originality and independence. There is a repro- 
duction even of the deceased sister's handwriting, 
her mode of expressing herself, her figures of 
speech, and her very signature. But the " sister " 
fails and becomes incoherent when a real test ques- 
tion is asked, when information is desired on any 
subject on which the deceased personality alone is 
known to have possessed accurate knowledge, when 
a systematic and deliberate attempt is made to ob- 
tain conclusive evidence of identity. It is then seen 



THE INTELLIGENCES 103 

that the phenomenon may conceivably be due to the 
abnormal mind-action of the sensitive, and that 
there is no good reason for assuming the presence 
and operation of an extraneous and independent 
spirit-intelligence (although, of course, there is al- 
ways the possibility that this is actually the case, 
and that the limitations displayed are merely an 
indication of the fact that it is an intelligence which 
is personating the dead). The evidence for sub- 
conscious mind-action may perhaps be considered 
complete when the presence of some other " imagi- 
nary sister " is desired, and when the seemingly in- 
dependent entity, acting on this suggestion, as- 
sumes the character of such a sister, and begins con- 
veying messages from an individual which, as a 
matter of fact, has never existed. 

It is conceded, then, that we have in this theory 
of the subliminal consciousness a means of account- 
ing for a multitude of interesting and sometimes 
exceedingly perplexing phenomena without resort- 
ing to the notion of spirit presences and spirit op- 
erations, and when the marvellous powers and pos- 
sibilities, of these subconscious mental processes, as 
we find them recorded in modern books on Hypno- 
tism, are fully borne in mind, we cannot certainly 
be surprised that some modern investigators have 
sought to find in this theory the clue to all the now 
known occult phenomena. 

This would, however, as Dr. Hodgson, Professor 



104 THE INTELLIGENCES 

Hyslop, and other recent investigators have so con- 
clusively shown in their exhaustive accounts of phe- 
nomena observed by them and published in the 
Proceedings of the Society, be stretching this theory 
to the breaking point, and, as already pointed out, 
would be introducing difficulties greater by far than 
those which the spiritistic theory in the wider sense 
presents. It is a theory which cannot possibly be 
made to cover the whole ground, and which be- 
comes wholly inapplicable when the character of 
certain phenomena is examined and when the pecul- 
iar circumstances under which they sometimes oc- 
cur are borne in mind. 

In the writer's opinion (and indeed in that of 
some of the best and most experienced investiga- 
tors) subliminal mind-action, even if all its supposed 
possibilities be admitted, is wholly inadequate to ac- 
count for: — 

I. The physical and objective phenomena which 
have been described, and the occurrence of which 
is now universally admitted. 

It will have been observed that many of them 
take place while the sensitive remains in a normal 
condition and while he retains entire control of his 
organism and faculties — that it is by no means 
always a case, as Mr. Hudson seems to assume, of 
trance or of complete insensibility. The writer has 
observed a variety of independent objective mani- 



THE INTELLIGENCES 105 

festations, such as " direct writing/' the apport of 
small objects, the playing of an instrument, the 
movement of furniture, the appearance of hands, 
etc., while the sensitive remained in an absolutely 
normal state, had himself so little acquaintance with 
the subject as not to know " what to expect," and 
throughout the experiment took part in the general 
conversation of the company assembled. 

And there is surely not a fragment of evidence to 
show that even the " liberated " subliminal of the 
sensitive has the power to perform any one of these 
physical acts — to move chairs, to execute writing, 
to apport objects, to exhibit the many innumerable 
and in so* many instances entirely unexpected ob- 
jective performances, which in some instances are 
designed for the very purpose of proving the pres- 
ence and operation of an independent spirit-intelli- 
gence. To boldly ascribe such manifestations to 
latent powers which the subliminal may conceivably 
be supposed to possess, without a fragment of evi- 
dence in support of such a supposition, is a mere 
clumsy attempt to evade an unwelcome conclusion 
and to beg the entire question at issue. Such sup- 
positions are very apt to be made by persons who 
assume a very learned and scientific attitude, and 
who have no doubt heard and read much about the 
phenomena in question, but from whose every state- 
ment it is often only too apparent that they have 
never themselves observed them under really fa- 



106 THE INTELLIGENCES 

vourable conditions, and in the presence of good sen- 
sitives. 

2. Again, subliminal mind-action does not cover 
phenomena by means of which information is con- 
veyed or knowledge displayed which could not 
possibly be within reach of the minds of the sensi- 
tive or of the sitters, and the correctness of which 
is only ascertained upon subsequent inquiry. As 
all experienced psychical investigators are aware, 
and as the ample records of the Society's Proceed- 
ings so abundantly testify, communications convey- 
ing information of this kind are constantly received 
in spiritistic circles and through the agency of sen- 
sitives, and, unless we claim for the subliminal 
consciousness powers amounting to omniscience, we 
are compelled to resort to the theory of extraneous 
spirit-intelligence, by some means unknown to us 
gathering such information and transmitting it 
through the agency of the sensitive. 

Professor Hyslop has recently made exhaustive 
inquiry into phenomena of this character, and his 
" Record of Observation of Certain Trance Phe- 
nomena," published in Part xli., vol. xvi. of the Pro- 
ceedings, show how insurmountable the difficulties 
of the subliminal mind theory are when it is applied 
to some of these phenomena. 

These difficulties may perhaps be best illustrated 
by adducing a case in point. 



THE INTELLIGENCES 107 

A stranger is introduced to a sensitive, who 
readily passes into a state of trance, and conveys 
a communication from a deceased relative of the 
stranger. The communication implies not only ac- 
curate knowledge on the part of the communicating 
intelligence of the stranger himself, his name and 
character and environments (all unknown to the 
sensitive normally), but also accurate knowledge 
of the stranger's relatives, living or dead, his rela- 
tionship to them — occurrences and circumstances 
connecting their life with his. It refers to events 
long past and forgotten by the stranger, comments 
upon them in a reasonable and intelligent way, and 
throws light upon occurrences that had perhaps for 
years caused considerable perplexity to his mind. 
It discloses a fact not known to> the stranger's mind, 
and only known to, perhaps, one other person liv- 
ing. It conveys a lot of other information respect- 
ing things past and present, and respecting individ- 
uals not personally known to the stranger, but 
known to this supposed deceased relative, and per- 
haps to other friends or relatives living in distant 
parts of the world. 

There are, it may be, flaws and mistakes here 
and there invalidating the force of the evidence for 
identity, but they are admitted to be conceivably due 
to lapses of memory, or perhaps to the imperfect 
method of communication. The account on the 
whole is remarkable and striking; there is in it a 



io8 THE INTELLIGENCES 

display of consistency and intelligence and of in- 
formation that could not possibly be within reach 
of the minds, sub or supra, of the sensitive or of the 
stranger. 

Now what powers of the subliminal consciousness 
of the sensitive would have to be postulated in or- 
der to cover a phenomenon of this kind ? 

( i ) It would, in the first place, have to abstract 
from the mind, sub and supra, of the stranger all 
the information it may possess respecting the de- 
ceased relative. It would have to accomplish this 
while he remains in a normal condition, is critically 
watching the development of events, and is person- 
ally resisting any disposition of his mind to yield 
such information. It would have to construct the 
material obtained into a consistent whole and create 
the impersonation. 

(2) It would, within a given time, have to pick 
out from amongst the myriads of human beings 
scattered throughout the world those individuals 
connected with the stranger who may possess the 
additional information which is required. 

(3) It would have to establish rapport between 
itself and these various minds. 

(4) It would have to abstract from them the 
particular information necessary for a consistent 
construction of the personality of the deceased rela- 
tive. 



THE INTELLIGENCES 109 

(5) It would have to exercise, in the abstraction 
of this knowledge, a selective and discriminative 
faculty, taking that portion of the knowledge only 
which will serve its particular end. 

(6) It would have to extract the knowledge ac- 
curately and at once, and while the mind of the 
person concerned is in a normal state and has no 
consciousness, and presumably no desire whatever 
of yielding it. 

These are only some of the difficulties which are 
involved in contemplating a process of this kind, 
and they will be felt, by all rationally minded per- 
sons at least, to be insuperable, even if an uncon- 
scious telepathic mind-intercourse, of the kind 
required, could, on the ground of observation and 
experience, be considered possible and probable. But 
" it ought to be constantly borne in mind," writes 
Sir Oliver Lodge, " that this kind of thought-trans- 
ference (the sensitive drawing upon the subliminal 
consciousness of living distant persons) without 
conscious active agency has never been experiment- 
ally proved." * 

A recent contributor to the Proceedings of the 
Society for Psychical Research (vol. xlv.), fully 
weighing and recognising the force of these over- 
whelming difficulties, writes as follows : — 

" The only serious objections to this hypothesis 
1 Proceedings, vol. vi. p. 453. 



no THE INTELLIGENCES 

(that the messages emanate from the medium's 
subliminal) are: 

" ( i ) That if this were actually the case, one's 
brain would be the recipient of vibrations, not only 
from one's friends and relatives, but from every liv- 
ing being in the universe. 

" (2) That, even granting that the facts are tel- 
epathically transmitted as suggested above, they 
would form an almost indescribable chaos, from 
which it would be almost impossible to select the 
right facts for the person thought of, thus making 
the medium's telepathic powers worse than useless ; 
for, instead of an orderly array of thoughts, con- 
nected with some particular individual, and classi- 
fied, to a certain extent, by some unknown associa- 
tion process, with his individuality, the medium's 
subliminal consciousness would find itself groping 
vaguely amidst a bewildering mass of evidential 
material, strewn helter-skelter throughout the sit- 
ter's subconsciousness." 

A further grave difficulty clearly presents itself 
from the moral point of view. If subliminal mind- 
action and thought-transference of the kind indi- 
cated could be really shown to be taking place, if the 
subliminal consciousness of the sensitive could be 
shown to have the power of " tapping " the sub or 
supra liminal mind of any living near or distant 
person at its own will and without the conscious 



THE INTELLIGENCES in 

intervention of such a person, the complex mind 
operations of mankind would practically be at its 
disposal, and there would cease to be a secret in the 
universe. Such a power, if it existed, would mani- 
festly introduce the most terrible complications into 
our moral and social life, and would lead to a state 
of confusion and anarchy which it is difficult to 
conceive. No man's thoughts or ideas or knowl- 
edge could any longer be considered his own, and 
the entire world-order would be upset. It may be 
doubted whether those who so glibly, and often in 
such studiously learned terms, discourse of the 
powers of the subliminal mind and of the possibility 
of solving all occult problems by its means, have 
ever seriously contemplated the full weight of these 
overwhelming difficulties and really know what they 
are writing and talking about. 

Another difficulty presented by the subliminal 
mind theory in its application to phenomena of this 
order lies in the curious circumstance that the com- 
municating intelligence almost always claims to be 
that of some deceased person. 

It will have been seen that where the spiritistic 
view in the narrower sense dominates the minds of 
the sitters, and where this view may be supposed 
to be acting by way of suggestion upon that of the 
sensitive, the phenomenon can be adequately ac- 
counted for. The subliminal consciousness, when 
liberated, has been shown to be strongly susceptible 



ii2 THE INTELLIGENCES 

to suggestions from without and of this character. 
But here, too, the theory does not cover the whole 
ground, and leaves a large portion of the mystery 
wholly unexplained. For it has been found that 
the communicating intelligence will claim to be that 
of the dead when no such suggestion can be said 
to emanate from the sensitive or the sitters, and 
indeed when the dominating mental attitude is that 
of utter scepticism as to the reality of the phenom- 
enon, and certainly as to the action of the dead in 
connection with it. As a matter of fact, it is some- 
times under these circumstances that exceptional 
pains are taken by the intelligences to demonstrate 
their entire independence of the sensitive and of the 
sitters, and that overwhelming evidence is adduced 
in favour of the truth of this assertion. 

" The stupendous difficulty," writes Professor Al- 
fred Russel Wallace, " that, if these phenomena and 
tests are to be all attributed to the ' second self,' then 
that second self is almost always a deceiving and 
lying self, however moral and truthful the visible 
and tangible first self may be, has, so far as I know, 
never been rationally explained." 

In other words: Can this subliminal self, while 
replete with information never normally gathered, 
be supposed to be always under a chronic and pro- 
found delusion as to its own identity ? 



THE INTELLIGENCES 113 

This brief inquiry into the character and powers 
of the intelligence displaying itself in connection 
with the occult phenomena under consideration will 
probably suffice to show how very strong the case 
in favour of independent spirit-action really is, and 
how overwhelming the difficulties of the subliminal 
mind theory are, even if all reasonable allowances 
be made and the theory be stretched to its utmost 
conceivable limits. The exhaustive inquiries into 
this aspect of the subject, conducted some years ago 
by Dr. Hodgson, and more recently by Professor 
Hyslop of Columbia University, and published in 
the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search, are practically conclusive on this point, and 
they should be more than sufficient to remove any 
lingering doubt from the minds of all really fair- 
minded students of the subject whose eyes are not 
holden by prejudice, and who are prepared to wel- 
come truth in whatever garb and from whatever 
quarter it may present itself. 

That, in the opinion of the last-mentioned inves- 
tigator, the spiritistic theory, while more adequately 
explaining the phenomena, also presents some very 
grave difficulties is a circumstance which should 
by no means be ignored or lightly passed over. On 
the contrary, it is one which should receive the most 
careful study and consideration, seeing that it is 
here that we are face to face with the real problem 
presented by this inquiry. For, in the writer's opin- 



ii 4 THE INTELLIGENCES 

ion, the difficulties which the spiritistic theory pre- 
sents to the purely scientific investigator is due to 
the circumstance that he conceives of this theory 
only in the narrower and conventional sense, and 
entirely fails to take into account the possibility 
that the intelligence, so frequently and manifestly 
operating in connection with these phenomena may, 
while independent and extraneous in character, be 
conceivably not that of the dead. 

The assumption of such a possibility would no 
doubt, as the writer is fully aware, be out of keep- 
ing with scientific methods and habits of thought, 
and would perhaps introduce into the inquiry an ele- 
ment more properly belonging to the sphere of 
religion and to that of the theologian. The writer 
is however fully convinced that it is only the full 
recognition of this possibility, here and there already 
hinted at by some recent investigators, which will 
clear away the greatest of the remaining difficulties 
attending that inquiry, and which will furnish the 
true clue to the many perplexing problems at pres- 
ent still awaiting solution. 



V 
THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

IN view of what has thus far been said, and of 
the direction in which rfiost recent psychical 
research is so manifestly tending, it is now proposed 
to examine the spiritistic theory in detail, to weigh 
the evidence which may, in fairness, be urged both 
for and against it, and to consider whether that evi- 
dence may, as a whole, be legitimately held to war- 
rant the conclusion that the spirits of the dead are 
the operating and communicating agents in con- 
nection with some of these phenomena. 

The subject is admittedly one of surpassing in- 
terest and significance, and the questions which are 
involved in such an inquiry must be seen to be of 
a grave and far-reaching character. It is there- 
fore necessary that we should bring to the inquiry 
an open and impartial mind, fully determined to 
survey not a portion only, but the whole of the field 
of fact and evidence which lies before it, and that 
we should allow neither personal predilections nor 
settled religious convictions to bias our judgment 
and to prejudice our verdict. 

This state of mind is unfortunately not an easy 

"5 



n6 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

one to attain, and it is certainly not the one in 
which the subject is apt to be approached by the 
larger proportion of interested inquirers. Most of 
us are swayed by personal feelings and predisposi- 
tions, by religious views tending in one direction or 
in the other, and it is often on the ground of such 
personal feelings, such a priori states of mind, 
rather than on the impartial examination of evi- 
dence, that our conclusions are apt to be formed. 
We are thus tempted to view the evidence from one 
point of view only, to lay undue stress upon one 
particular line of argument, while perhaps depre- 
ciating the force and cogency of another, and to 
blind our eyes to facts and circumstances which we 
instinctively feel to be destructive to the particular 
theory which we desire to see established. 

Modern spiritistic literature supplies many in- 
stances in illustration of the truth of this statement 
and of the manner in which evidence can be manip- 
ulated in order to fit in with particular views, and 
it is very probable that most thinkers have uncon- 
sciously fallen into this intellectual snare some time 
or other in the course of their inquiries and inves- 
tigations. It is only as our knowledge of the 
subject increases and as our general view expands, 
as the immense difficulties and intricacies which this 
particular inquiry presents are more thoroughly 
recognised, as the conclusions built up upon a cer- 
tain line of evidence come to be negatived by evi- 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 117 

dence of an entirely different sort, that we are led to 
retrace our steps and to once more traverse the 
whole ground, and that our ultimate conclusions, in 
so many instances, differ so fundamentally from 
those formed amidst our first and most powerful 
impressions. 

The first, and for perhaps the larger number of 
persons, the most telling argument in favour of the 
spiritistic theory is the circumstance that it is the 
one increasingly adopted by science. 

It will have been seen from the references given 
in the introductory paragraphs of this book that 
those best acquainted with the subject and possessed 
of the largest amount of accurate knowledge and 
experience, are practically unanimous in pronounc- 
ing in favour of the spiritistic explanation of the 
phenomena. If these pronouncements are in some 
instances still somewhat halting and reserved, or 
are hidden under a technical and scientific phraseol- 
ogy, they are on that account no less clear and em- 
phatic. And the strength of this position is further 
increased by the consideration that it has been ar- 
rived at by men eminent in other departments of 
scientific research, who entered upon the inquiry 
with no favourable disposition and certainly with no 
a priori state of mind in any way inclining them to- 
wards the spiritistic theory. On the contrary, they 
may be said to have adopted it in spite of their per- 



n8 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

sonal leanings and inclinations, and solely because 
the steadily accumulating evidence compelled that 
conclusion. They arrived at it after every other 
theory, suggested to explain the phenomena and 
admitted to explain a very large proportion of them, 
had been fully and fairly examined and allowed for. 

We cannot therefore be surprised that this un- 
expected and unforeseen testimony, on the part of 
physical science, carries strong weight with a large 
mass of inquirers, and that it is so increasingly 
affecting the public mind as to be powerfully instru- 
mental in supporting and advancing the modern 
spiritistic movement. 

It should be observed, however, that while hold- 
ing the spiritistic theory in a wider sense, while ad- 
mitting that all the phenomena cannot be accounted 
for on subjective grounds, and that the intervention 
of spiritual beings can alone do so, there are many 
experienced investigators who cannot be said to 
have accepted the spiritistic theory in the narrower 
sense, and to have in any way committed themselves 
to the view that the spirits of the dead must be re- 
garded as the agents concerned in their production. 
Indeed, we find in many of them traces of consider- 
able mental reserve, pointing to difficulties which 
they would seem to have experienced in the course 
of their researches, and which would seem to have 
suggested caution in the pronouncement of their 
verdict. 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 119 

Thus Sir William Crookes, while committed to 
the spirit theory in the wider sense, to the action 
of extraneous intelligence in connection with some 
of the phenomena, cannot be said to have expressed 
himself in favour of the theory in the narrower 
sense — that the intelligence is that of the dead. 

" Whilst I have observed many circumstances," 
he writes, " which appear to show that the will and 
intelligence of the medium have much to do with 
the phenomena, I have observed some circumstances 
which seem conclusively to point to the agency of 
an outside intelligence not belonging to any human 
being in the room." The writer has not come 
across any statement in Sir William Crookes' pub- 
lished accounts which would seem to warrant the 
conclusion that he believed that intelligence to be 
that of the dead. 

In the same way, Professor Barrett, while quite 
clear in his acceptance of the spiritistic theory in 
the wider sense, is not equally clear in the narrower 
sense. In any case he admits that the induced phe- 
nomena may not always be due to the spirits of the 
dead. Speaking of a case resembling " obsession " 
in old time, he says 1 : — 

" Possibly this is an instance of duplex-person- 
ality; more probably I think it is, what it purports 
to be, a lower influence, or ' spirit,' acting through 

1 Necromancy and Ancient Magic in its Relation to Spirit- 
ualism. 



120 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

the medium. Evil as well as good agencies doubt- 
less exist in the unseen; this is equally true if the 
phenomena are, or are not, due to those who have 
once lived on earth. In any case, granting the 
existence of a spiritual world, it is necessary to be 
on our guard against the invasion of our will by 
a lower order of intelligence and morality." 

Again, the late Professor Henry Sidgwick, while 
strongly inclining towards the theory of unembodied 
intelligences, has nowhere expressed it as his view 
that he considers these intelligences to be departed 
human beings. Indeed, Professor Sidgwick' s ut- 
terances on this subject were at all times character- 
istic for their extreme caution and reserve, and for 
a certain determination not to go an inch beyond 
what the evidence may legitimately be said to war- 
rant and to justify. 

" Although I do not myself at present," he wrote, 
" regard the theory of unembodied intelligences as 
the only hypothesis which will account for known 
facts, it is the hypothesis most obviously suggested 
by some of these facts." 

In subsequent paragraphs statements from the 
published writings of former spiritists will be given, 
from which it will be seen that in many instances 
grave and valid reasons for rejecting the spiritistic 
conclusion presented themselves after prolonged ob- 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 121 

servation and further experiment and experience, 
and that this was the case even though the theory 
had long passed into a firm intellectual conviction, 
and had exercised a powerful moral influence upon 
the holder. 

Still, it is fully conceded that the spiritistic theory 
in the narrower sense is increasingly becoming the 
view of a number of scientific researchers, and it is 
no doubt this significant circumstance which is so 
largely instrumental in advancing and strengthen- 
ing the modern movement, and which is favourably 
disposing the public mind towards the belief that 
the surviving personalities of departed men are the 
agents instrumental in producing the phenomena 
under consideration. 

A second argument in favour of the spiritistic 
theory is no doubt its simplicity. 

To a very large number of persons the theory 
commends itself on this ground alone, and where 
the existence of a spirit-world and the possibility 
of its action upon our present state of being are 
thoroughly admitted, such an inference would, in 
the majority of instances, be no doubt the one 
naturally suggesting itself by the phenomena ob- 
served. It is, moreover, the theory apparently in 
harmony with the universal belief of mankind, and 
its acceptance has the further great merit that it 

saves a vast amount of trouble and complications. 
9 



122 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

Thus this simple theory practically disposes of 
the subliminal self and the many intricate problems 
to which its study has called attention; it peoples 
the unseen world with the spirits of departed human 
beings only; it creates a philosophy which is more 
than sufficient to explain every difficulty and to 
meet every objection lying in the path of careful 
and circumspect research. It sees in every serious 
assault upon itself either the unreasoning scepti- 
cism of the uninformed scientist, or the senseless 
fanaticism of the religionist, and it deals with both 
in the spirit and terms of a loftier and more exalted, 
creed, and of a more large-hearted and rational 
philosophy. 

And it is this lofty tone, this air of superiority, 
suggestive of a nobler conception of human life and 
destiny, and of a deeper and truer knowledge not 
within reach of the ordinary occasional inquirer, 
which is so eminently calculated to lead minds 
astray, and to cause even the thoughtful to shut 
their eyes to the very real problems and difficulties 
which acceptance of this theory beyond all doubt 
involves. How great and manifold these difficul- 
ties are will be pointed out hereafter. 

It should, however, be observed here that, while 
it is quite true that the belief in the action upon us 
of unseen spiritual intelligences and in occasional 
perceptible manifestations of the spirit-world is a 
very universal one to which our very instincts would 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 123 

seem to bear witness, it may seriously be doubted 
whether the phenomena of modern spiritism stand 
in any kind of legitimate relation to this belief. 
For the same human nature which universally be- 
lieves that the dead can sometimes communicate 
with the living, and that there is an occasional ir- 
ruption of the spirit-world into the world of mat- 
ter, also believes that irruption to be of a fitful and 
spontaneous kind, wholly beyond human power and 
control, and taking place according to laws of which 
it has and can have no sort of inkling or knowledge. 
It is apt to look upon that world from which 
this occasional irruption proceeds w T ith awe and rev- 
erence, and as a general rule to shrink instinctively 
from approaching it too closely — intuitively, as 
it seems, discerning the dangers that might be found 
to be attending such approach. 

Indeed, there is no necessary connection whatever 
between the common belief in the spirit-world and 
occasional spirit-manifestations, and the modern be- 
lief which is based upon the phenomena initiated 
and invoked in the seance room ; and the distinction 
need but be pointed out in order to be recognised. 

The identity of these two modes of manifestation 
is for the most part tacitly assumed in spiritistic 
literature, such assumption being a constant and 
fruitful source of misapprehension and confusion, 
and leading, in many instances, to entirely unfair 
and illegitimate inferences. The distinction, there- 



124 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

fore, should be clearly borne in mind by all pains- 
taking students of the subject. 

The phenomena to which the universal belief of 
mankind bears witness, and upon which it is founded 
are, so far as we are concerned, spontaneous phe- 
nomena. They take place according to laws and 
conditions unknown to us and without any conscious 
initiative on our part. They have in most instances 
a beneficial moral aim or effect — conveying warn- 
ing, imparting reproof, or perhaps giving intima- 
tion of impending moral or physical danger. 

The modern spiritistic phenomena take place in 
consequence and by reason of a conscious and de- 
liberate human initiative. They are induced for 
the purpose of gratifying human curiosity, and they 
are dependent upon and contrived by means of a 
human medium and agency. Their aim and effect 
is admittedly not always a good and beneficial one. 
Thus very little thought will make it apparent that 
the belief of the modern spiritist has no necessary 
connection with that belief in a spirit-world and 
spirit-manifestation which is so universally enter- 
tained by mankind. 

It may further be urged in favour of the spiritistic 
theory that at first sight it would seem to explain 
all the phenomena and to cover the whole ground. 

It is beyond all doubt the intensely human char- 
acter of the manifestations which is so apt to entrap 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 125 

the judgment of the occasional observer, and in 
some instances, to lead captive even that of the ex- 
pert scientist. Some of the communicating intelli- 
gences most certainly bear a marvellous and striking 
resemblance to the dead. They have an accurate 
knowledge of the conditions and circumstances of 
our earth-life. They act and speak like those who 
have once themselves lived in this world and taber- 
nacled in a human body. They know our language, 
our modes of thought and expression, our ways of 
looking at and of judging things seen and unseen. 
They know our human weaknesses, our strong 
points, the peculiar tendencies of our temperament 
and character. They fit naturally and normally 
into our common life and its manifold conditions 
and environments. 

And there is, in some of these intelligences, a 
wonderful continuity of ideas and of individuality. 
A spirit, writing automatically through the hand of 
a sensitive, will adopt a certain thought-form or 
mode of writing and expression to which he will 
adhere throughout and by means of which he will, 
in the course of time, become identified. He will 
to-day continue a communication abruptly termi- 
nated yesterday, and he will continue it at the pre- 
cise word or comma at which he left off, intelli- 
gently connecting the thought and concluding the 
sentence. 

Or he will adopt a knock or tap peculiarly his 



126 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

own, by means of which his advent may be distin- 
guished, and he will for months, and sometimes even 
for years, consistently adhere to this mode of com- 
munication. Or, if the manifestation be objective 
in character, a spirit will, in voice and appearance 
bear many of the distinguishing marks of some de- 
ceased personality; he will reproduce any peculiar 
physical defect which may have characterised it; he 
will lisp or stammer or cough in the precise manner 
in which the deceased was known to have lisped or 
stammered or coughed. He will, in short, present 
a personality in general outline closely resembling 
that of the dead. 

And there is in evidence of this kind a strangely 
convincing and persuasive power. It is apt, in some 
instances, to break down the strongest scepticism 
and to take captive the most rebellious and antago- 
nistic intellect. 

The writer knows of instances in which the doubts 
of years have melted away before a peculiar and 
familiar touch, or in the reproduction of some well- 
known and well-remembered habit, and in which a 
single word, peculiarly pronounced, brought final 
conviction to the mind. There is, it is fully ad- 
mitted, a great deal in even very ordinary spiritistic 
phenomena that at first sight speaks strongly in fa- 
vour of the presence and action of the dead. 

But there are, on the other hand, many incon- 






THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 127 

trovertible facts which have to be placed side by 
side with this apparently favourable evidence, and 
which will, when carefully weighed and examined, 
be seen to witness strongly against the spiritistic 
theory. 

1. There is, in the first place, the difficulty, if 
not impossibility, of satisfactorily establishing iden- 
tity. 

This difficulty is very universally admitted by 
expert inquirers, and also by a large number of 
experienced and fair-minded spiritists. 

It applies, firstly, to the name of the particular 
communicating intelligence claiming to be that of 
some departed friend or relative. That name is 
never given straightforwardly and unhesitatingly. 
In most instances the inquirers are invited to guess 
at it, or to deduce it from the nature and contents 
of the communication which is being made. And 
there is invariably, even in the case of an apparently 
successful guess, a considerable amount of reserve 
on the part of the spirit-intelligence, indicating an 
uncertain state of mind, and suggesting the possi- 
bility of a mistake and of a subsequent modification 
of its assent. When, in the course of further de- 
velopment, it becomes clear to the inquirer that such 
a mistake must actually have occurred, the intelli- 
gence will readily accommodate itself to the situa- 
tion. It will either declare that the supposed de- 



128 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

ceased relative has already gone, and that another 
spirit has taken his place; or that its mind is still 
clouded and perturbed from the violent shock of 
death and from want of familiarity with the new en- 
vironments; or it will assert that the doubt gen- 
erated in the inquirer's mind is reacting on its own 
mind, and is causing the confusion. Or it will, by 
an ingenious manipulation of the contents of the 
communication given, point out an error or mis- 
conception in its interpretation, and thus attempt to 
evade the difficulty. 

Or it will resort to the still bolder manoeuvre of 
insisting that the misstatement was purposely made 
in order that the faith and confidence of the in- 
quirers in the integrity of the spirit-messengers 
might be tested, and that the evidence might be 
made more emphatic and convincing in the end. 
The fact remains that in by far the larger number 
of instances, while the intelligence is clear and em- 
phatic enough in its account of itself, while it re- 
fers with accuracy to many events and circum- 
stances relating to its supposed past life, while its 
method of communication is perfect in its precision 
and control, its memory is invariably faulty and 
unreliable as to the exact name which it bore in 
that supposed past earth-life. 

Many of the intelligences, and this is more par- 
ticularly the case with those constituting themselves 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 129 

what is technically called the habitual " controls "* 
of the sensitive (his guides and directors), never 
claim any kind of earth relationship with the sensi- 
tive, and either call themselves by some kind of 

1 How marvellous and extended the powers and faculties 
of some of these " controls " are, may be gathered from an 
account of " Sittings with Mrs. Thompson," given by Dr. Van 
Eeden in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search, xlvi., 1902. " Nelly (Mrs. T.'s control) announced, in 
the course of various seances, that on three occasions she 
herself, and on another occasion another spirit, had come 
to visit me in my dreams. In two instances these visits cor- 
responded closely in time with dream visions of my own 
which I had recorded in my diary previously to the receipt 

of letters from Mr. P , giving details of Nelly's statements, 

and in all four instances there is evidence of telepathic rapport 
between Nelly and myself. The second instance is the most 
remarkable. For then, in my dream, I made what I thought to 
be a mistake, and called out ' Elsie ! Elsie ! ' instead of ' Nelly.' 
I put down the fact in my notes the next morning, the name 
Elsie being absolutely without any meaning, and quite strange 
to me. Two days later I got a letter telling me that Nelly's 
spirit-friend Elsie had heard me calling, and that she had been 
sent by Nelly to answer me. So my mistake was no mistake ; 
the name Elsie, though strange to me, had come into my head 
by some mysterious influence, and the message across the 
channel was received." 

In Mrs. Piper's case two apparently distinct controls are 
capable of communicating simultaneously, one by the voice 
speaking and one by the hand writing. " Mrs. Piper's right 
hand," wrote Dr. Hodgson in the Forum, some years ago, 
" is taken possession of, so to speak, by some other ' control,' 
purporting to be a deceased friend of the sitter, while Phinuit 
' controls ' the voice. On two occasions both hands wrote 
contemporaneously and independently of each other, purport- 
ing to represent different 4eceased persons, while Phinuit was 
using the voice." 



130 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

poetic or conventional name, such as " sunshine " 
or " dewdrop," or give that of some well-known 
and long since deceased personality. It is then ex- 
plained that it is by the occult law of affinity or 
spiritual harmony that they have been drawn into 
the sensitive's sphere and environment, and that 
they have come for the purpose of conveying infor- 
mation and instruction, and of giving evidence cal- 
culated to bring a doubting world back to a belief 
in a spirit-state and a future life. 

If by any chance a circumstance is discovered 
which does not fit in with these statements of the 
supposed deceased personality, or which flatly con- 
tradicts them : — if Cicero, for instance, is found to 
have misquoted Latin, or to have cited, as his own, 
sentences which he has never written, or if some 
medical " control " is discovered to have made a 
wrong diagnosis, it is explained that the communi- 
cation is being made through an imperfect instru- 
ment, that it is not sufficiently passive for the in- 
telligence to express its ideas correctly, or that 
amidst the changed conditions of its life it has lost 
the power of accurately distinguishing its own 
thoughts from those of the mind through which it 
is. operating. 

The spiritistic theory, in fact, as to the nature 
of the future life and the transformations which 
our mental operations are there said to experience 
can, as will be seen hereafter, be easily made to 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 131 

cover and to explain difficulties and objections of 
this, and indeed of every kind. 

But the difficulty of satisfactorily establishing 
identity is equally great when the name of some 
well-remembered deceased relative has been given at 
the outset, and when that name is rigidly adhered 
to throughout the entire course of the experiment. 
We thus sometimes meet with instances in which 
the evidence is satisfactory up to a certain point. 
There is a series of accurate references to the past 
earth-life, to a mass of incidents of perhaps a triv- 
ial but still highly evidential character, there is a 
consistent account of the supposed past earth-life 
in its general characteristics and outline. But there 
is invariably a startling display of lapse of memory 
when some of the less well-known incidents of the 
past life are referred to, when comment upon or 
explanation of any particular occurrence in it are 
invited, or when some definite statement disclosing 
some of its more hidden secrets are asked for. The 
writer has frequently suggested tests of this charac- 
ter and in no single instance have they been im- 
mediately and satisfactorily supplied. He has again 
and again pointed out that one good test of iden- 
tity would consist in the communication of some 
circumstance not possibly within the knowledge of 
anyone of the sitters but easily ascertainable upon 
subsequent inquiry. In only one or two instances 
was such a test supplied, subsequent inquiry, how- 



132 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

ever, going to show that even such information was 
conceivably within reach of the subliminal mind of 
the sensitive or latent in that of several of the sit- 
ters. The writer is convinced that when such ap- 
parently conclusive evidence is given at subsequent 
sittings it cannot be accepted as of any value in es- 
tablishing the identity of the intelligence. Careful 
observation and experience have taught him that 
these intelligences have means of gaining access to 
knowledge which are wholly unknown to us, and 
that they frequently avail themselves of those means 
in order to furnish proof of identity. He knows 
of instances in which a supposed friend or relative 
communicated for months and even years and, day 
by day, gave fresh and striking evidence of identity, 
some portions of which could not possibly have been 
in the minds of the sensitive or of the sitters, but 
where the intelligence, on its own confession, turned 
out to be a masquerading one in the end, and where 
the information given must therefore have been 
gained through access to other, and in these in- 
stances, distant mind or minds or by other means 
unknown to us. Speaking generally, however, 
there is in these intelligences as the American Pro- 
fessor Newbold writes, " An unaccountable igno- 
rance of matters which on any theory should have 
been well-known to them," and it is this unaccount- 
able ignorance which, in his opinion, constitutes a 
forcible argument against the spiritistic theory. 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 133 

And that the difficulty referred to is no mere iso- 
lated experience, due perhaps to imperfect observa- 
tion or to doubts increasingly growing up in the 
inquirer's own mind, is evident from the writings 
of some spiritists, themselves thoroughly convinced 
of the reality of the phenomena and committed to 
the spiritistic theory in the narrower sense. 

" Another cause of doubt," wrote the late Mr. 
Stainton-Moses in Spirit-Identity (p. 42), "is the 
extreme difficulty that is usually found in getting 
any fact precisely given, especially facts that are 
certainly external to the knowledge of the sitters. 
There is a general haziness about the messages 
where there is not positive error in the statements 
made, and it is extremely difficult to get anything 
like definite and concise facts plainly put, unless this 
be insisted on as a preliminary to further colloquy. 
. . . Another cause which has strengthened 
the inherent feeling of antecedent improbability 
with which most of us start, is the mass of contra- 
dictions in the messages and the general air of un- 
reality that very frequently pervades them. It 
seems unreal and unlikely that a friend with whom 
our converse was that of soul to soul should appear 
for a moment only at a promiscuous seance to give 
the briefest passing word of salutation, or to cause 
the poor mourner to vex himself as to the identity 
of his friend, if not to feel disgusted at an apparent 
attempt to sport with his feelings, etc." 



i 3 4 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

" Inconsistencies, incoherencies, and contradic- 
tions in a communicator's account of himself," 
writes Mrs. Sidgwick, " oblivion and error about 
things which it seems inconceivable that the real 
person should have forgotten or be mistaken about, 
and an intellectual standpoint inferior to his in 
life are, it will be admitted, good reasons for doubt- 
ing the communicator's claim to identity." 

The late Professor Perty, a well-known Swiss 
physiologist and, for many years, an ardent investi- 
gator of the occult, who in his deeply interesting 
work, The World Seen and Unseen, had pronounced 
in favour of the spiritistic theory, wrote in his later 
years, in his Recollections of an Inquirer into the 
Mysteries of Nature and of Spirit, as follow? : — 

" Many spiritists believe that they have had posi- 
tive experiences of this kind (establishing identity 
of spirits with certain deceased persons), and I have 
in my book taken this into account and have ex- 
pressed myself in favour of spirit-identity, pro- 
nouncing the theory of a deceiving demonic world 
to be the less probable one. It cannot, however, be 
denied that the proofs in favour of this position 
are not as convincing as we could desire. For 
when these beings are questioned as to their nature 
and mode of operation, their answers are, for the 
most part, evasive, ambiguous, and frequently triv- 
ial and unsatisfactory." 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 135 

A very interesting case in point is that of the 
trance-personality or " control " of the famous Bos- 
ton medium Mrs. Piper, respecting whose integrity 
and abnormal powers Dr. Hodgson, Professor 
James, and the English scientists are entirely agreed. 
In Mrs. Piper's case spirit-control would seem to 
have attained its most perfect form and to be free 
from those defects which imperfect trance, absence 
of the necessary mind-passivity on the part of the 
sensitive, and any lingering doubt in the sitters' 
mind as to the absolute bona fides of the sensitives 
are apt to import into the development of the phe- 
nomena. 

Mrs. Piper's chief control is (or rather was) an 
entity calling itself " Dr. Phinuit " — according to 
his statements a former Marseilles physician, but 
now One of the many enlightened and advanced 
spirits eager to prove to a doubting and especially 
a scientific world the continuity of life and the per- 
sistence of the individual after physical death. 

" Dr. Phinuit " writes and speaks intelligently 
and connectedly through Mrs. Piper's entranced or- 
ganism, he gives information on subjects wholly 
outside any conceivable reach of her mind, he intro- 
duces deceased friends and relatives of persons un- 
expectedly brought to Mrs. Piper's seances (in one 
instance with features concealed) and he exhibits all 
the marks of a consistent and continuous and en- 
tirely independent individuality. 



136 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

" Whatever or whoever Phinuit may be," writes 
an experienced observer, " he is a well-established 
personality, so strongly marked and with such defi- 
nite characteristics, that Mrs. Piper, in her trance 
state, is Phinuit and no longer Mrs. Piper. It 
would be difficult to imagine two personalities so 
absolutely dissimilar as Mrs. Piper, gentle, simple, 
womanly, with a somewhat narrow range of inter- 
ests, and Phinuit, blustering, masculine, tricky, and 
prevaricating." 

All attempts which have been made with a view to 
clearly establishing Phinuit's identity — a thing 
which should present no particular difficulty, seeing 
that it is not so many years since he claims to have 
left the body — have failed, and Mr. Leaf, writing 
on this subject in volume vi. (p. 560) of the Pro- 
ceedings, expresses it as his opinion that there is not 
the least ground for believing that Dr. Phinuit is 
what he gives himself out to be — the spirit of a 
departed Marseilles physician. 

" His own word does not," he says, " in view of 
his moral standard, apart from other considerations, 
carry even a presumption of veracity ; nor has a sin- 
gle one of the numerous statements he had made as 
to his life on earth proved capable of verification. 
On the other side, his complete ignorance of French 
is a positive ground for disbelieving him and one 
which he has never been able to explain/' 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 137 

As a particular instance of Phinuit's prevarica- 
tions Mrs. Sidgwick quotes the following passages 
from Dr. Hodgson's article in volume viii. (p. 50) 
of the Proceedings. 

" Definite evidence establishing the existence of 
a Jean Phinuit Scliville under the circumstances de- 
scribed by Phinuit would not, of course, establish 
the identity of such once living person with Mrs. 
Piper's Phinuit, but the complete lack of any such 
evidence appears to me to tell forcibly against the 
supposition that Mrs. Piper's Phinuit is what for 
several years he has been asserting himself to be. 

" Concerning his inability to speak French, Phi- 
nuit's original explanation to me was that he had 
lived in Metz the latter part of his life, and there 
were many English there, so that he was compelled 
to speak English and had forgotten his French. I 
replied that that explanation was very surprising, 
and that a much more plausible one would be that 
he was obliged to use the brain of the medium, 
and would therefore manifest no more familiarity 
with French than she possessed. This — trite 
enough — suggestion appeared to Phinuit also more 
plausible, since a few days later he offered it himself 
to another sitter as an explanation of his inability 
to sustain a conversation in French. 

" Dr. F , one of Mrs. Piper's sitters, ques- 
tioned Phinuit about the prominent medical men in 

Paris in Phinuit's time. The names of Bouvier and 
10 



138 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

Duptiytren were given. Dr. F tells me he him- 
self knew nothing about Bouvier previously, but 
knew well about Dupuytren. The doctors he had in 
mind at the time of his question ' were Velpeau 
Bouillaud, Nelaton, Andral, and many others, all 
prominent forty or fifty years ago, with extended 
reputations.' 

" Taking the foregoing considerations together, 
it appears to me that there is good reason for con- 
cluding that Phinuit is not a French doctor." 

In volume xxxvi. of the Proceedings, Mrs. Sidg- 
wick writes : — 

" The statements and the intellectual calibre of 
many of Mrs. Piper's trance-personalities are utterly 
inconsistent with their claim and even in the best 
personations there are lapses which cannot easily be 
explained if we are in direct communication with 
the professed communicator. ... At the same 
time . . . along with the limitations there are 
fragments of knowledge exhibited by the trance- 
personality in some sittings which it is very difficult 
to suppose to have been acquired by Mrs. Piper in 
any normal way. A large proportion of these frag- 
ments of knowledge are in the minds of the sitters, 
some are in the minds of distant living persons and a 
few were, so far as we can tell, known only to the 
dead." 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 139 

Professor William James says : — 

" The prima facie theory, which is that of spirit- 
control, is hard to reconcile with the extreme trivial- 
ity of most of the communications. What real 
spirit, at last able to revisit his wife on this earth, 
but would find something better to say than that 
she had changed the place of his photograph ? And 
yet that is the sort of remark to which the spirits, 
introduced by the mysterious Phinuit, are apt to 
confine themselves." 

But a still more fatal instance of failure to estab- 
lish spirit-identity is reported in the Proceedings of 
the Society published in 1898. It is one of very ex- 
ceptional significance, as it is concerned with the 
supposed communication, after departure from the 
body, of Mr. W. Stainton-Moses (m.a. Oxon.), a 
man who during his lifetime was one of the best and 
most trustworthy of English mediums, and who for 
a number of years and to the very end of his life, 
was an enthusiastic and ardent defender and propa- 
gator of the spiritistic theory and creed. From the 
spiritistic point of view it was certainly a thing 
reasonably to be expected that such a person would, 
after death, make exceptional efforts to communicate 
with his friends in order to satisfactorily establish 
identity, since he, above all others, must have been 
aware that it is there that one of the very weakest 



140 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

links in the spiritistic chain of reasoning is to be 
found. 

Mr. Stainton-Moses, it will be remembered had, 
in the course of his earth-life, received a series of 
very striking automatic communications on the great 
subject of religion and of man's relation to the 
spirit-world and to God. These communications 
had been declared to emanate from some of the 
great sages of antiquity inhabiting the higher 
spheres of the spirit-world, who in the course of 
ages had gathered vast stores of knowledge and 
learning, and whose mission it now was to educate 
the world, and to impart to it true views of duty 
and of religion, and more exact information as to 
the future life. 

In their dogmatic aspect these communications 
had had a revolutionary effect on Mr. Moses' mind 
— at that time a clergyman of the Church of Eng- 
land and a master at University College, London. 
He had experienced considerable difficulty in accept- 
ing them, had again and again entertained misgiv- 
ings as to their real origin, but had finally yielded 
to the beauty and apparent reasonableness of the 
ideas and sentiments contained in them. 

The chief communicators of these automatic mes- 
sages had been in the habit of designating them- 
selves " Imperator," " Rector," and " Doctor." Be- 
fore his death, however, Mr. Moses had obtained 
the supposed real earth names of these intelligences 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 141 

and had communicated them to his friend, the late 
Mr. F. W. H. Myers, only. After Mr. Stainton- 
Moses' death, therefore, Mr. Myers' mind would be 
the only mind in the world holding these names. 
And Mr. Myers was in England when news came 
that Mr. Moses was apparently communicating 
through the mediumship of Mrs. Piper in America. 
Other spirit-intelligences communicating through 
the same medium, of whose integrity Dr. Hodgson 
had little doubt, vouched for his identity, declared, 
in fact, that " they had found him (Mr. Moses) in 
another part of their world " and accurately de- 
scribed his former physical appearance, etc. The 
soi-disant Stainton-Moses then began to write 
through Mrs. Piper's hand, and, commenting upon 
some of the statements made by his former spirit- 
guides, modified them to a very considerable extent, 
declaring some of them to be untrue and contrary 
to his own now personal experience, others to be 
imperfectly expressed and " more the medium's own 
theory of things." 

It was then suggested to " Mr. Stainton-Moses " 
that as no one in the United States knew the actual 
earth names of his three former controls, it would 
be an excellent test of identity if these names were 
now given and were found to be those disclosed to 
Mr. Myers in England during Mr. Stainton-Moses' 
lifetime. 

After a good deal of shuffling and delay three 



142 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

names were actually given, but, much to the dis- 
appointment of those interested in the experiment, 
neither of these three names was found to corre- 
spond with those disclosed to Mr. Myers by Mr. 
Stainton-Moses during his lifetime. 

" In this case," writes Professor W. R. New- 
bold, 1 " we have the difficulties which attach to the 
spiritistic theory brought out in the highest relief. 
The general tenor of the communications, the al- 
lusion to Mr. Speer, the reception of the names of 
Myers and Hodgson, have an air of verisimilitude. 
The communicator then gives us, with the most sol- 
emn asseveration of their accuracy and with ap- 
parent consciousness of the importance of his state- 
ment to a cause which he had in life much at heart, 
three names which the real Mr. Moses must have 
known and which of all possible things would seem 
to be the hardest for the spirit to forget — the 
names of the spirit- friends who, as he claims, opened 
his eyes while still on earth to the realities of the 
eternal life. And not one of these names is true or 
has the least semblance of truth! Furthermore, of 
all the points touched upon during the sitting this 
was the only one that was unknown to both the sit- 
ters. ... To my own mind this failure on the 
part of the alleged Moses is an obstacle to the ac- 
ceptance of the spiritistic theory which has not yet 

1 Proceedings, part xxxiv. 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 143 

been set aside, and which must be satisfactorily ex- 
plained before that theory can be regarded as meet- 
ing the requirements of the case." 

We have here, then, a clear and proven case of 
spirit deception, from whatever point of view we 
may be disposed to look upon the phenomenon 
presented. For either the spirit-personality com- 
municating through Mrs. Piper, and whose identity 
with the late Stainton-Moses is vouched for by an- 
other spirit-intelligence (a former personal friend 
of Dr. Hodgson), was not that of Stainton-Moses, 
and was but making desperate but futile attempts 
to extract the information desired from the mind of 
one of the sitters, or possibly seeking to establish 
telepathic communication with Mr. Myers' mind. 
Or if, in spite of the grave difficulties attending such 
a conclusion, the identity of the spirit with the late 
Stainton-Moses be admitted, the intelligences which 
communicated through his mediumship during his 
earth-life, and which made disclosures revolution- 
ising his life, must have been untruthful and must 
have made deliberate misstatements. 

The matter assumes a serious aspect when it is 
borne in mind that the disclosures made through 
Mr. Stainton-Moses' agency are practically accepted 
as foundation truths by thousands and tens of 
thousands of intelligent spiritists, and that it is upon 
the statements of " Imperator," " Rector," and 



144 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

" Doctor " that the higher form of modern spirit- 
ism constructs its creed and philosophy. 

But that the difficulty of satisfactorily establish- 
ing spirit-identity, under proper test conditions im- 
posed by expert and cautious observers, is not con- 
fined to England only, but is experienced in all parts 
of the world, is evident from many incidental refer- 
ences in the better-class foreign spiritistic literature, 
and from the works of painstaking investigators 
who, although thoroughly committed to the spirit- 
istic theory and to the belief that a large propor- 
tion of these phenomena must be ascribed to the 
action of the dead, are nevertheless determined not 
to assert anything beyond what the evidence at 
present available may be said to warrant. 

These difficulties may not unfairly be summed 
up in the weighty words of the late Mr. Aksakov, 
a former Russian Minister of State and the author 
of a deeply interesting work, entitled Animism and 
Spiritism. 

" What, then," writes Mr. Aksakov (p. 738), " is 
the final conclusion of our treatise on the spirit 
hypothesis. It is this : that while we have by a 
laborious road arrived at the conviction that the 
individuality of man survives the dissolution of the 
body, and is capable, under certain conditions, to 
manifest itself by means of a human body susceptible 
to such affinitive influences, the absolute proof as 
to the identity of the manifesting intelligence is an 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 145 

impossibility. We have to content ourselves with 
a mere relative proof, with the mere possibility of 
admitting the fact. This is a truth which we should 
thoroughly recognise." 

2. The second grave difficulty in the way of ac- 
cepting the spiritistic theory in the narrower sense 
is the known love of personation on the part of 
the manifesting intelligences. 

In the course of the preceding paragraphs atten- 
tion has already been drawn to this curious aspect 
of the phenomena. It is a difficulty which is well 
known and recognised by really experienced experi- 
menters, and to which all spiritistic literature in all 
countries of the world bears constant and em- 
phatic testimony. The writer has come across in- 
numerable instances in which the assumption of 
the name of some great historic celebrity, or of 
some more recently deceased person of note, char- 
acterised all the manifestations, but in which the 
simplest test, based upon some knowledge of that 
individual's ideas or writings, more than sufficed 
to disperse the illusion. 

We thus meet with Carlyles who do not remember 
the most striking and best-known incidents in their 
past history, with Newmans who cannot mention 
the title of a single book which they have written, 
with Kingsleys who, in the other world, have be- 
come the most hopeless of idiots and imbeciles. We 



146 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

meet with " vain creatures," as Mr. Stainton-Moses 
himself puts it, "strutting in borrowed plumes — 
Shakespeares who cannot spell, Bacons who cannot 
convey consecutive ideas; with others, really actors 
of excellence, who play their part for a time with 
skill.'' " The free use," he continues, " made of 
names great and honoured amongst men, is one of 
the most suspicious of signs, especially when we 
find, as is too frequently the case, that they are 
made the sponsors for pretentious nonsense, bom- 
bastic platitude, or egregious twaddle, still more so 
when the claims put forward break down on the 
simplest examination." 

In some instances, as has already been pointed 
out, the " liberated " subliminal mind — to speak in 
the phraseology of modern psychical science — of 
the sensitive may well be held to be the true 
originator of the personation, supplying from its 
storehouse of information the material necessary for 
the construction of the supposed personality. But 
this clearly cannot be held to be the case in each 
single instance, certainly not in those in which other, 
and perhaps objective manifestations, attend the 
phenomena, in which the sensitive remains in an 
entirely normal condition, or in which it can be con- 
clusively shown that his intellectual status and en- 
vironments preclude the possibility of access, even 
subliminally, to some of the knowledge displayed 
by the operating intelligence. We are in such in- 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 147 

stances driven to the conclusion that some inde- 
pendent spirit-entity, closely allied to the medium, is 
creating the personation, even though it be creating 
it much after the method adopted by the subliminal 
mind. 

In spiritistic circles an extraordinary and incom- 
prehensible amount of confidence is apt to be placed 
in these masquerading intelligences, and the writer 
knows of cases in which the latter have been allowed 
to continue their pranks for years, even though 
every test applied to establish identity had failed, 
and it had become plain to the most inexperienced 
observer that the intelligence could not possibly be 
that which it gave itself out to be. 

But by far the most frequent phenomenon in con- 
nection with these experiments is the attempt, on 
the part of the intelligences, to personate departed 
friends or relatives of inquirers. Here, as has al- 
ready been pointed out, the greatest possible facili- 
ties are afforded to the operators by the thoughts 
and desires for the most part animating the sitters, 
and by the ease with which information, necessary 
for the success of the personation, becomes accessi- 
ble to them. 

Some of these personations are strangely success- 
ful and realistic, and they are apt to become more 
so as the confidence of the circle increases, and as 
the minds of the sitters, by reason of a higher de- 



i 4 8 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

gree of passivity attained, more readily yield the in- 
formation required. 

In the writer's opinion, other and distant minds 
can also, after a time, be brought into requisition, 
and can be " tapped " by these intelligences, so that, 
for the casual observer, the case for identity would 
at times almost seem to be complete. But for the 
really cautious and watchful mind there will always 
be some flaw in the evidence. It generally consists 
in those " little things " or circumstances attending 
the manifestation which are better felt than de- 
scribed, and which it is extremely difficult to put 
into words. 

Thus we have the report of a Miss W , writ- 
ing in the Proceedings of the Society (vol. viii.), as 
follows : " The clearly marked personality of that 
friend whom I will call T., is to me the most con- 
vincing proof of Mrs. Piper's supernatural powers, 
but it is a proof impossible to present to anyone 
else." " Yet her mother/' it is added, " felt after 
a sitting that it did not really seem like T" 

A very world of meaning is contained in these 
latter words, but the probability is that the mother, 
if asked on what grounds she based her doubts 
would, in the face of the generally conclusive evi- 
dence, be unable to state them — for the simple 
reason that these doubts flow from a variety of 
" little things " connected with human personality, 
the absence or presence of which remain in most in- 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 149 

stances the most telling evidence in the matter of 
identity. 

Dr. Hodgson, as many psychic students know, 
was strongly disposed to accept the identity of the 
intelligence designated by him " G. P." with that of 
his deceased friend, yet " believing in G. P.'s guar- 
antee," writes Mrs. Sidgwick, " involves us in diffi- 
culties, since he is capable of corroborating false 
statements." 

In the same way Mrs. De Morgan, wife of the 
distinguished American scientist and spiritist, and 
author of that interesting work, From Matter to 
Spirit, informs the London Spiritualistic Alliance 1 
" that the resemblance seems never to be perfect and 
to consist of fragments of similarity, or even iden- 
tity, rather than of a strong general presentation of 
the whole being." 

So thoroughly indeed is the difficulty arising from 
this manifest tendency to personation on the part of 
the spirit-intelligences realised by our modern ex- 
perimenters that various ingenious theories have 
been suggested by them with a view to accounting 
for the perplexing phenomenon in some manner not 
unfavourable to the spiritistic theory. 

With that accepted in spiritistic circles we are 
already familiar. We have seen that the conven- 
tional spiritistic notions respecting the future con- 
ditions of the discarnate spirit — the difficulties 

1 Address delivered in 1886 (p. 9). 



150 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

presumably attending its attempts to communicate 
through the agency of a perhaps imperfect medium, 
the various circumstances apt to interfere with the 
conditions necessary for a perfect manifestation — 
can be stretched to almost any extent, and can be 
made to explain away every kind of unfavourable 
evidence. But it is a theory which can scarcely be 
said to bear close investigation in the light of our 
fuller knowledge and in that of a wider and more 
many-sided experience. 

Professor Sir Oliver Lodge suggests the possi- 
bility of a manifestation of a portion only of the 
deceased personality — a kind of semi-conscious in- 
telligence in some incomprehensible way drifting 
into our sphere or environments through the agency 
of sensitives. 

" Eliminating," he writes, " physical phenomena 
for the present, suppose that I am asked further: 
Do you consider that trance utterances are ever due 
to the agency of departed persons? I am bound 
to say that, as regards the content or intelligence 
of the message, I have known cases which do very 
strongly indicate some form of access to a per- 
sistent portion of the departed personality; and oc- 
casionally, though rarely, the actual agency of a 
deceased person is indicated. 

" But if by agency my hearers understand me to 
mean in all cases conscious agencies, direct com- 
munication with full consciousness of what is going 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 151 

on, they must allow me to explain that of that in 
most cases I am extremely doubtful. It seems to 
me much more often like a dream intelligence or a 
subconscious part of the persistent mind that we 
have access to, not a conscious part. It appears to 
me still a true kind of telepathy; and telepathy 
from, as well as to, a subconscious stratum. To 
tell truth, I do not myself hold that the whole of 
any one of us is incarnated in these terrestrial 
bodies; certainly not in childhood; more, but per- 
haps not so very much more, in adult life. What 
is manifested in this body is, I venture to think 
likely, only a portion, an individualised, a definite 
portion, of a much larger whole. What the rest of 
me may be doing, for these few years while I am 
here, I do not know : perhaps it is asleep ; but prob- 
ably it is not so entirely asleep with men of genius ; 
nor, perhaps, is it all completely inactive with the 
people called ' mediums/ " 

The very suggestion of this theory is indicative 
of the immense difficulty which cultivated thought 
experiences in the face of the perplexing problems 
presented by these manifestations. But it is a 
theory suggested by reflection and in the study, 
rather than by the persistent observation of phe- 
nomena in the seance room and in the presence of 
sensitives. For why is it, we may surely ask, that 
the dream-likeness is somehow most marked when 



152 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

pressing questions seeking to establish identity are 
being put, but that it entirely vanishes under all 
ordinary conditions ? There is, as a matter of fact, 
nothing in the least dream-like about the larger 
number of these intelligences. On the contrary, 
they are apt to exhibit a most astonishing and ex- 
traordinary wide-awakeness, indicating a perfect 
control of faculty, and displaying a remarkable in- 
genuity in the obtaining of information and in the 
manipulation and adjustment of that information 
for purposes of their own. 

In his address delivered before the Fourth Inter- 
national Congress of Psychology in Paris in 1901 
Dr. Frederick H. Van Eeden said: — 

" My personal impressions have been subject to 
the following variations : During the first series of 
experiments, in November of last year, I had on 
two or three occasions a very vivid impression that 
the man whose relics I had brought with me — 
namely, a pair of gloves — and who died sixteen 
years ago, was a living spirit, and in direct rapport 
with me through the intermediary, Mrs. Thompson ; 
a number of small details gave me a sense of the 
evidence being complete. When I returned to Hol- 
land I discovered that there were inexplicable er- 
rors. If I was really holding intercourse with the 
deceased he could never have made such errors as 
I found in my notes. And what was noteworthy 
was that these errors were always in the details that 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 153 

/ did not myself know, and which I was not able 
to correct at the time." 

We have here a very excellent case in point, and 
one strongly suggesting personation on the part of 
the manifesting intelligence. In fact, no other ex- 
planation will really meet the circumstances of the 
case. Dr. Van Eeden was satisfied that the intelli- 
gence was not that of some secondary personality 
of Mrs. Thompson ; it was not his own " subliminal 
self," since he remained during the manifestation in 
a conscious and entirely normal state. An in- 
telligent independent entity, therefore, would seem 
to have been communicating, and that intelligence 
bore some resemblance to the deceased personality 
which it gave itself out to be. " But the construction 
of that personality depended for its material upon 
Dr. Van Eeden's conscious and perhaps unconscious 
memory, and even in the manipulation of that ma- 
terial the intelligence was not altogether successful. 
" If I was holding intercourse with the deceased 
he coidd never have made such errors as I found 
in my notes! " 

And there is nothing in the evidence subsequently 

obtained by Dr. Van Eeden, in the way of familiar 

gestures and expressions of joy and gratitude 

which, in the face of the known powers and practices 

of these intelligences, can be said to furnish a strong 

case in favour of identity. It must always remain 
11 



154 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

a suspicious circumstance that at a first communica- 
tion such information only is given as can be shown 
to be contained in the mind of the experimenter, and 
that additional information and evidence in favour 
of identity is only furnished on subsequent occasions, 
when the experimenter is increasingly en rapport 
with the intelligence, and when he is consequently 
increasingly, though unconsciously, yielding infor- 
mation stored up in his sub or supra liminal mind. 
Nor does Dr. Van Eeden's suggestion that, while 
the spirit may perhaps be really communicating at 
first, the medium's " other self " may, after a time, 
be taking its place and, acting on suggestion, may 
continue the personation, leaving it a difficult mat- 
ter to determine at what point the veridical manifes- 
tation ceases and the personation begins, lessen the 
force of this suspicion. On the contrary, the theory 
of an independent intelligence, having access to 
some facts respecting the deceased personality, and 
only in the course of time securing additional in- 
formation, as the storehouse of the experimenter's 
mind is being increasingly thrown open to it, or 
as it is able to obtain it by other means unknown to 
us, is far more in keeping with the general evidence 
furnished by spiritistic experiments, and infinitely 
better explains all the facts of the case. A de- 
ceased personality, anxious to give indubitable evi- 
dence of its identity, might surely be expected to 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 155 

at once and unhesitatingly present some little fact 
or circumstance calculated to leave no possible doubt 
on the inquirer's mind, and to effectually settle the 
main question at the very outset. That such facts 
or circumstances are never presented in this way, 
and at the very start, surely forcibly suggests in- 
ability on the part of the communicating intelli- 
gence to present them. 

The force of this argument is still further 
strengthened when it is borne in mind that one of 
the claims of these intelligences is that it is their 
mission to establish proof of the continuity of the 
individual life after physical death, and that they are 
" sent " to free man's clouded understanding from 
the bondage of mistaken beliefs, and to enlighten 
him as to his duties and the consequences of his ac- 
tions both here and hereafter. Beings coming to 
us on such a mission and for such a purpose, and 
having had so long and so favourable an opportu- 
nity of ascertaining and of overcoming the hin- 
drances lying in the way of acceptance of their 
mission, may reasonably be expected to present to 
us better and more satisfactory credentials. It is 
not upon evidence so wholly unsatisfactory as theirs, 
upon " disclosures " so contradictory and admittedly 
mixed with so much falsehood, upon manifestations 
manifestly so often fraudulent, that thoughtful per- 
sons will be disposed to abandon their cherished 



156 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

and tried convictions, and that they will adopt a 
creed or a philosophy so revolutionary in its charac- 
ter and tendency. 

" Can spirits/' inquires Mr. Stainton-Moses, evi- 
dently struggling with these difficulties and suspi- 
cions, " can spirits, being, as we know, able to obtain 
access to sources of human information, get up their 
facts and give such travesty of them as they can 
remember, reckoning not without some show of 
reason, on the credulity which will accept any plau- 
sible story, or on their power to psychologise the in- 
vestigator or so mix up fancy, fraud, and fact as 
to bewilder and perplex him ? " 

In another place x he frankly admits that " all the 
information ever given him in proof of the presence 
of the departed might, in harmony with his ex- 
perience of the spirits, have been first obtained and 
then imparted by a false intelligence. " 

" It must be clear," writes Mr. Aksakov, in An- 
imism and Spiritism, 2 " that if the spirit of a me- 
dium has the power to share the inward conceptions 
of the sitters and to form a body in accordance 
with them, how much more must a spirit, freed 
from the body, be able to do this and to an extent 
of which we may have no idea. This is the reason 
why likeness is no proof of identity." 

1 Spirit-Identity, p. 43. 2 p. 730. 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY. 157 

3. A third difficulty in the way of acceptance 
of the spiritistic theory is the general moral char- 
acter of the manifesting intelligences. 

It is important, in this connection, to clearly dis- 
tinguish between the communications and the com- 
municators, and to bear in mind that the two have 
no necessary connection with each other. We can- 
not establish the moral integrity of an individual 
only from the things he may write or say. Spirit- 
ists are never tired of urging as evidence of the 
high moral character of some of the intelligences 
the exceptional beauty and lofty tone of their com- 
munications, as though it were a self-evident truth 
that high moral sentiment cannot go together with 
moral baseness, and that lofty and pure ideas must 
of necessity emanate from a lofty and pure source. 

The universal experience of mankind unfortu- 
nately bears constant and emphatic testimony to the 
very contrary, and the error underlying this view 
has probably never been so forcibly exemplified as 
in the days in which we live. Thousands know to 
their cost and, in many instances to their grievous 
suffering, that even the most exalted religious pro- 
fession may go hand in hand with the most pro- 
nounced moral depravity and with the most extreme 
form of social and commercial dishonesty. " By 
their fruits ye shall know them " is no doubt the test 
which we have the best possible authority for apply- 



158 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

ing in the matter, but words and statements are not 
fruits and the expression of the loftiest sentiment is 
no sure indication of the moral integrity of the 
source from which it flows. 

As a matter of fact we have, in our present state 
of being, no means whatever of determining in what 
the " fruits " of these intelligences may be con- 
ceived to consist : we can only form our judgment 
upon the general effect which intercourse with them 
produces upon human conduct and human char- 
acter, and upon the kind of things which they are 
known to habitually do. And under the application 
of this test the spiritistic theory must be admitted to 
exhibit its very weakest points and to suggest the 
gravest possible consideration. 

It is because of the habitual doings of these in- 
telligences, of the way in which they are apt to act 
and of the mischief so frequently resulting from 
such action, that Spiritism itself has hitherto been 
regarded with so much disfavour and distrust by 
the general public. There is scarcely an investi- 
gator of the phenomena who, if he were to speak 
the whole truth, has not a story to tell of cunning 
and crafty deception, of the exhibition of deliberate 
falsehood and prevarication, and of the display of 
heartless and wanton cruelty. The very trifling of 
these intelligences, by the habitual personation of 
the dead, with the most tender instincts of our na- 
ture is indicative of a high degree of moral per- 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 159 

verseness, and even though the largest possible al- 
lowance be made, in view of the spiritistic theory, 
for the frequent and unavoidable intervention of 
" low spirits," or for the hindrances necessarily ob- 
structing the approach of and communications from 
the exalted dead, the phenomenon is too frequent 
an one, and one occurring under conditions too fa- 
vourable, to admit of any modification of our judg- 
ment. And the circumstance that there are some 
instances on record in which this perverse spirit- 
element would seem to be strangely absent from the 
phenomena, and even after a lapse of years to be 
showing no signs whatever of exhibiting itself, 
does not really invalidate the force of our argument. 
The writer has before him a number of carefully 
investigated and in some instances personally ob- 
served cases in which the spirit-intelligence, after 
giving for many months in succession abundant evi- 
dence of its identity with some deceased friend or 
relative, after conveying the most exalted teachings 
respecting human duty and responsibility, after ha- 
bitually introducing itself by prayerful aspirations of 
the most elevating kind, and completely transform- 
ing the mental and moral life of the persons con- 
cerned, was in the end discovered to be a masquer- 
ading intelligence and, on its own confession, keenly 
intent upon working the moral and physical ruin of 
its victims. The ingenuity displayed in attaining 
this end, the tricks and subtleties resorted to in 



160 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

order to escape detection and to continue " in pos- 
session," were in one or two instances of a kind 
passing all human comprehension and imagination, 
and the wonder is that anything like an escape 
from such toils is ever effected at all. In some in- 
stances this is only accomplished after the physical 
constitution of the victim has been completely ruined, 
in others the termination of the experiment is 
reached in the asylum or in some institution for the 
cure of nervous disease. It is surely here, not in 
their exalted utterances and moral platitudes, that 
the true " fruits " of these intelligences are to be 
found. 

With the writer, therefore, the objection that with 
some investigators the phenomena have from the 
beginning been persistently good, and that after the 
lapse of time they are still so at this present mo- 
ment, would have no weight whatever, seeing that 
innumerable instances of this kind, but nevertheless 
terminating fatally, are known to him, and that the 
denouement may be reached at any moment. The 
true aim of these intelligences, moreover, may be 
nothing more than the entire " control " of the sen- 
sitive in order that by the perfect exhibition of spirit 
marvels additional inquirers may be drawn into the 
fatal circle. The probability is that this is one of 
the reasons why some highly developed sensitives 
escape altogether unharmed, and why they are able, 
without apparent injury to themselves, to continue 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 161 

the exercise of their mediumship right into old age. 

But, whatever view we may be disposed to take of 
the matter, it must be evident that, considering the 
doubts and misgivings with which so many persons 
approach the study of occult phenomena, and the 
termination which the receipt of any undesirable 
message is so likely to bring to such studies, it is 
hardly to be expected that the spirit-intelligences, 
anxious as we know them at all times to be to open 
up communication, would prejudice their case by 
writing or saying things which would but go to 
shock the moral or religious sensibilities of such per- 
sons, and which would thus defeat their own ends. 
There are cases on record where this has been done, 
but such cases are the exception, not the rule. The 
common experience of all investigators is that the 
intelligences invite their confidence by the expression 
of high sentiments and by the assertion of good aims 
and intentions, and that they are only too apt to ac- 
commodate their religious and moral views to those 
entertained by the company in which they find them- 
selves. But really experienced investigators also 
know that no reliance whatever can be placed upon 
these statements, and that the religious views of the 
spirits in particular are subject to the most serious 
and startling modifications. This aspect of the sub- 
ject will be more fully dealt with in subsequent para- 
graphs. 

Mrs. Sidgwick, writing of the objections which 



1 62 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

in this connection must be urged against the spiritis- 
tic theory, says * : — 

" A disposition to assume powers not possessed 
and to resort to prevarication and false excuses to 
account for ignorance or failure, are moral defects 
which are well known to be frequently exhibited in 
automatic writing, and which are abundantly ex- 
hibited in Mrs. Piper's trance utterances, whether 
spoken or written." 

In illustration of this we may quote the follow- 
ing:— 

" Mrs. Piper's controls, ' George Eliot ' especially, 
professed to visit Mr. Myers' circle and to give and 
receive messages. Not once was there a glimmer 
of truth in what was said. Dr. Hodgson, inquir- 
ing about this, received the reply, ' We would ask 
you to ask him (Myers) to consider carefully what 
his thoughts were, that is, not those put into actual 
speech.' " 

It will be admitted, at any rate, that such a dis- 
play of ingenuity has not the appearance of some 
dream-like state or partial manifestation of the oper- 
ating intelligence. An unprejudiced mind, on the 
contrary, would most probably conclude that the in- 
telligence gives indication of an exceptional wide- 

1 Proceedings, vol. xxxvi. 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 163 

awakeness and of complete control over its mental 
apparatus. 

" ' Phinuit's ' character/' we read, "is tricky; 
he has all sorts of ways of getting out of a difficult 
position. He will ignore a question that does not 
please him, or change the subject, or discuss side 
issues in order to gain time; often returning later 
to the point and dealing with it correctly enough, 
suggesting the possibility of his waiting for the 
chance of getting the information needed from the 
mind of the sitter." 

" A certain degree of moral perversity," writes 
Mr. Frank Podmore, " is a frequent and notorious 
characteristic of automatic expression." 

The literature of modern spiritism abounds with 
references to the exhibition of this moral perverse- 
ness on the part of these spirit-intelligences, and 
even though the accepted spiritistic theory may be 
stretched so as to amply explain and cover the fre- 
quency of the phenomenon, the admission is on that 
account no less suggestive and significant. 

Mr. Stainton-Moses writes in Spirit-Identity: — 

" Some spirits will assent to leading questions, 
and, possessed apparently with a desire to please, 
or unconscious of the import of what they say, or 
without moral consciousness, will say anything. 
Such motiveless lying bespeaks a deeply evil nature. 



1 64 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

. . . Such an impostor, acting with an air of 
sincerity, must be as satan clothed in light." 

In Appendix II., p. 104, we find the following 
weighty words : — 

" I believe that the agencies concerned in Spirit- 
ualism are principally departed human beings, 
though I also believe that some or many of the lower 
phenomena are caused by beings who have not yet 
reached man's plane of intelligence, even as I hold 
most surely that some who have progressed far be- 
yond it do return to enlighten and instruct him. 

"It is not for me to deny that there are at work 
in Spiritualism agencies other than departed spirits 
of our kind. If I insist on the action of these human 
spirits, it is because I think I see need to do so in 
order to preserve the balance of truth ; not because 
I have any intention of ignoring the action of 
spirits below the plane of humanity, or of minimis- 
ing the undoubted power of trans-corporeal action 
of the embodied human spirit." 

In Edmond's Letters on Spiritualism, p. 96, we 
read : — 

" The spirits, though they continued to manifest 
whenever invited, and breathed nothing but kind- 
ness, goodwill, and affection, yet spoke so many 
falsehoods that he was disgusted with the exhi- 






THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 165 

bition. . . . On being asked for explanations 
as to their false statements, they could give no ex- 
planations/' 

In some instances, as is well known to investiga- 
tors, the intelligences themselves admit their low 
moral condition, and, accommodating themselves to 
the views entertained by the sensitive or sitters as to 
their condition and the aim of their coming, they 
seek to approach him by inviting their prayerful in- 
terest in their behalf. 

Thus we read in Spirit-Identity, p. 56 : — 

" The atmosphere that surrounded the spirit, and 
of which I was painfully conscious when he mani- 
fested his presence, was similarly indicative of un- 
happiness, and he earnestly asked for prayer. He 
had been a grasping man : gold had been his god ; 
and he had lived on to find himself bound by golden 
fetters to the earth where his treasure had been. I 
have no words to describe the sensation of cold dis- 
comfort that his presence brought, nor the air of 
gruesome and grim misery that was conveyed to 
us by what was told respecting him. His designa- 
tion in spirit-life was Woe. The spirit who told us 
this was asked to put in one word what had brought 
him to this state. That word was given at once 
with an intensity that impressed us all most power- 
fully — Greed. Yet he had not been what the 
world calls an evil-liver, nor neglectful of his duties. 



1 66 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

On the contrary, in his hard, mechanical way he 
had been punctual and exact in their discharge. But 
his spirit had been starved," etc. 

Or to quote from Mr. Stainton-Moses' private 
note-book, portions of which were published in the 
Proceedings, Part xxvii. p. 62 : — 

" After sitting for some time we heard a most 
melancholy noise, which sounded like the wailing of 
the wind passing through an iron grating. It grew 
louder and was a most weird sound, giving the im- 
pression of unrest, wailing, and woe. We all felt 
awe-struck, especially when we were informed that 
the sound was produced by a large body of undevel- 
oped spirits who were trying to get to us ; but our 
band of spirits would not allow them to approach 
near the circle. We had never heard so awful a 
sound as this before. We were then informed by a 
spirit controlling that Imperator had permitted them 
to come, hoping that the spirit atmosphere round the 
circle would benefit them, and he had trusted that 
they were more progressed than they appeared to 
be." 

The writer has personal knowledge of a number 
of deeply interesting cases in which the ultimate de- 
velopment of the phenomena disclosed the real aim 
of the spirit-intelligences to be a desire to gain con- 
/ trol of the mind of the sensitive. The methods 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 167 

adopted with this end in view were, in some in- 
stances, of a most subtle and ingenious character, 
displaying an accurate and surprising knowledge, 
on the part of the intelligences, of the ways and hab- 
its and general disposition of the sensitive and of 
the means by which the desired end was most likely 
to be reached. The establishment of this control 
was in each case a slow and imperceptible process, 
extending over a considerable period of time (in 
several instances years), and involving a variety of 
startling and most extraordinary experiences. In 
each case the sensitives themselves remained scepti- 
cal to the very last as to the dangers threatening 
them and as to the real ultimate aim of the intelli- 
gences. 

From prolonged observation and from informa- 
tion obtained within the last few years (for the 
most part privately communicated to him), the 
writer is inclined to think that control of the sensi- 
tive is far more frequently the real ultimate aim of 
the intelligences invoked through the agency of sen- 
sitives than is commonly supposed, and that the 
entire complicated machinery of mediumship is often 
set in operation with this one end in view. That 
such control is not successfully effected in each single 
instance, and that there are persons who even after 
prolonged experiments escape wholly unharmed, 
may no doubt be satisfactorily explained on the 
spiritistic theory (the mixed character of the intelli- 



1 68 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

gences, the greater facilities afforded by our earthly 
environment for the approach of the lowest amongst 
them), but its explanation may also lie in the pecul- 
iarities of character and temperament of the sensi- 
tive, and possibly too in certain limitations imposed 
on the intelligences themselves, these constituting 
hindrances in the way of a complete establishment 
of control. 

While there are, for instance, persons who natu- 
rally and normally incline to passivity of mind, and 
who are of a submissive and yielding mental consti- 
tution, there are others possessed of the very oppo- 
site characteristics, such characteristics being most 
probably in themselves sufficient to prevent domina- 
tion by an outside control, or at least rendering that 
domination a very partial and incomplete one. 

Again, there are persons of a naturally unsuspect- 
ing and trustful temperament, inclining them in- 
stinctively to accept and to believe what is presented 
in an attractive and plausible and convincing form. 
. Such persons, therefore, naturally susceptible to im- 
pressions and influences from without, become still 
more so when repeated sittings develop in them 
/' mind-passivity, and when there is a strong personal 
desire to enter into communication with the unseen 
world and the spirits of the dead. Indeed, such 
persons may be said to be natural mediums, and 
they may be conceived to be quickly and readily, 
even though unconsciously, yielding themselves to 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 169 

spirit-control. There are other persons of strong 
and independent character, sceptical perhaps in the 
matter of the spirit-world and of spirit-intercourse 
and cautiously and judiciously sifting and weighing 
every scrap of evidence that is being presented to 
them — resolutely refusing to obey the dictates of 
any intelligence that does not present satisfactory 
credentials, and concerning whose identity and in- 
tegrity they have good reason to entertain doubt. 
Such persons would naturally, by their very tempera- 
ment, erect barriers in the way of an invading in- 
telligence, and with them the process of taking con- 
trol would, under the most favourable circumstances, 
be a difficult and protracted one, the probability be- 
ing that such control would not in any case become 
entire and complete. 

It must be evident that in these respective in- 
stances the phenomena might reasonably be expected 
to exhibit many degrees of variety, and experience 
would certainly seem to point to the fact that it is 
in this direction, in the mental attitude and consti- 
tution of the sensitive and the sitters, rather than in 
the intelligences themselves, that we have to look 
for the true solution of the many problems presented 
by these manifestations. 

There is the further consideration of the physical 
health and environments of the sensitive or investi- 
gator, considerations of air, of food, of natural con- 
stitutional vigour or weakness, as the case may be. 
12 



170 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

These, beyond all doubt, stand in very real relation 
to the production of occult phenomena, and to the 
degree in which access of the intelligences is apt to 
be facilitated or hindered. 

In any case it is from the acts and doings of these 
intelligences, and from the admitted frequency of 
these doings, from the effect which they are known 
to have upon the sensitive and the investigator, not 
from the statements and assertions which they may 
choose to make respecting themselves and their aims, 
that we can alone draw safe and reliable inferences 
as to their true nature and character, and as to the 
reasonableness of their claim to be the spirits of the 
dead. 

And even though it be conceded that the spirits 
of a certain class of persons constantly passing over 
into the other world might reasonably be held to 
be the authors and originators of these frauds and 
deceptions, the frequency of the occurrence and the 
cruelty and heartlessness so often characterising 
them would still create the greatest possible diffi- 
culty in the way of acceptance of this theory. 

Experience constantly teaches that in the most de- 
based of mankind there is a sense of awe and rev- 
erence respecting all that relates to the world unseen 
and to the life after death, of respect for those in- 
nate feelings of our nature which impel us to look 
for some kind of token or communication from those 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 171 

we have loved and lost — a respect, indeed, often 
exhibited in a most touching and surprising man- 
ner. And unless we are content to believe that 
such persons, after the change of death, undergo 
the most entire and complete transformation, part- 
ing with every trace of right and proper feeling, 
and, in the course of time, assuming a kind 
of demonic nature, we cannot attribute to them 
the phenomena to which attention has been di- 
rected. 

Much less can we accept the notion that the deli- 
cate mission of enlightening and instructing a doubt- 
ing world as to the realities of a future world and 
of a future responsibility, and of opening up com- 
munication between it and our present state of being, 
has been entrusted to intelligences of this order, who, 
at the very best, can be shown to be in nine cases 
out of ten of a low moral order, and most of whom 
abuse the power and the knowledge which they de- 
clare to have been placed in their hands. 

A vast amount of material, containing first-hand 
evidence of an extremely interesting character, has 
recently come into the writer's hands, and has gone 
to confirm and strengthen impressions which have 
been slowly forming in his own mind. Unfortu- 
nately, this evidence is for the most part of so deli- 
cate and personal a character that it cannot be used 
for publication in a work of this kind. In one or 



s* 



172 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

two instances, however, this restriction does not 
apply, an express desire accompanying the communi- 
cation that the substance of it might be used in the 
interests of this great inquiry, and as a warning to 
oversanguine and incautious investigators. 

One correspondent, until recently an inmate of 
an asylum, whither spirit-intercourse had, in .the 
course of time, brought him, writes : — 

" The spirits are capable of taking possession of 
any person who comes into relation with them by 
entering and encompassing their bodies, thereby 
getting complete knowledge of every thought of the 
brain, and also obtaining the faculty of suggestion. 
Even where the possessed one is ignorant of being 
possessed, the obsessing spirit can, by suggesting 
thoughts, order the action of the victim or medium 
or controlled one (whatever name you prefer) so 
that he or she will act quite differently to their nor- 
mal manner — indeed, act against their own nature. 
The spirit will impel them to speak things they 
would not, do things they should not, and confuse 
their brain, so that they are actually incapable of 
knowing, if conscious of spirit-control, whether it 
is their own ego or the spirit's which acts. . . . 

" As it is the object of many spirits to live once 
more in the flesh, the more intelligent and attractive 
persons in the better positions of life are, no doubt, 
most liable to be obsessed. The entry of the spirit 
into the human body is so subtle in its action that 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 173 

it is not noticeable by any but the developed medium, 
who knows the sensation of entry and of leav- 
ing. . . . 

" In regard to persons confined in lunatic asylums 
* who are in reality obsessed, there will be no remedy 
while our doctors are in complete ignorance as to the 
causes of insanity." 

The writer's prolonged personal observation has 
led him to the conclusion that the method commonly 
adopted by the controlling intelligences with a view 
to eliciting the various subjective phenomena of 
mediumship and to obtaining control is the hyp- 
notic one. It is on this theory that many of the 
startling occurrences of the seance room, sometimes 
so strongly suggesting the presence and action of de- 
ceased friends and relatives, may be easily and ade- 
quately accounted for. 

We know what happens when a person is placed 
in the hypnotic state and when his mental opera- 
tions pass to a large extent under the control of 
the hypnotiser. His mind then becomes a highly 
sensitive instrument, which may be manipulated and 
impressed at will, and in which images can be 
formed which, for the subject, assume all the charac- 
teristics of a definitive objective reality. Such per- 
sons can be made to see and to accurately describe 
things and persons which do not exist, and which 
have their origin solely in the ideas and mind-pic- 



174 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

tures formed in the brain of the hypnotiser. Any 
idea, too, or impression, or picture, lying latent in 
the mind of the subject, can thus be externalised by 
means of suggestion, and can, so long as the subject 
remains under control, become to him a thing ob- 
jectively as real as anything of which he may have 
knowledge by means of his ordinary waking mind 
and senses. Substitute for the corporeal hypnotiser 
a spirit-entity, operating by the same method, but 
with infinitely greater facilities, and all is explained. 

The first and necessary condition for the success 
of the operation would be mind-passivity on the 
part of the sensitive. Control having been effected 
and rapport established between the two intelligent 
agents, the mind of the sensitive would become a 
willing and obedient instrument, marvellously 
adapted for the production of the many strange phe- 
nomena of mediumship so perplexing to the mind 
of the casual observer. 

The spirit-intelligence would then be able, by 
means of suggestion, to create in the mind of the 
sensitive the image of any object, or scene, or per- 
son, the visualisation of which circumstances and 
the particular aim of the intelligence might demand, 
and the things seen, having for the sensitive for the 
time being all the marks of an objective reality, 
would be described by him as such to the investi- 
gators. 

And since there can be no doubt that a spirit- 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 175 

intelligence, wholly in rapport with the sensitive, 
and entirely controlling his mind, must have access 
to the better portion of the latent contents of that 
mind, both sub and supraliminal, and also most 
probably to some of the contents of other minds 
assisting at the experiment, it will readily be seen 
that the manifestations produced might well be ex- 
pected to be of an infinitely more successful and 
surprising character than those produced by the 
corporeal hypnotiser. 

We can thus understand how the sensitive may 
come to give messages from departed friends and 
relatives whom he sees but who are not really there, 
how he can describe scenes and persons and occur- 
rences in the spirit-world which do not exist and 
which are not taking place, and how he can ac- 
curately simulate and reproduce the very voices and 
gestures and modes of expression and even the sig- 
natures of the departed dead. 

Very little thought and reflection will go to show 
what a vast mass of abnormal phenomena such 
spirit-hypnotism may not cover, and how many in- 
consistencies, inaccuracies, and misrepresentations so 
frequently attending these manifestations, it may 
not go to explain. 

Indeed, it is the very thing that we might expect 
to occur under the application of the method indi- 
cated. For it is scarcely to be supposed that the 
whole of any individual mind is ever open to the 



1 76 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

controlling or invading intelligence, or that the real 
internal order and sequence and mutual relationship 
of the ideas and impressions lying latent in the mind 
can be accurately gauged and determined by it. 
The probability is that fragments and disconnected 
parts only of such knowledge can be extracted and 
manipulated, and that it is by shrewd guesses and 
by the automatic working of the sensitive's mind, 
rather than by the exercise of any discriminative 
and selective power on the part of the intelligence, 
that the effect is produced. The sensitive, to put it 
briefly, becomes, in the state of trance and of mind- 
passivity, a living automaton, acting wholly at the 
will of, and in obedience to the suggestion of the 
controlling intelligence. Frequent experimentation 
increases the facility of inducing this control and of 
bringing about a more intimate access of the in- 
telligence to the various portions of the automaton's 
mental mechanism, and it is the most perfect control 
and the most expert manipulation of that mechan- 
ism which produces the best phenomena and the 
most convincing and lifelike presentations of the 
dead. 

" The whole matter of spirit-seeing," declares one 
of these intelligences, " is an imposition upon the 
credulity of the public ... a mere trick played 
off by impressing the subject with the scene which 
the spirit wishes him to behold. . . . This most 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 177 

masterly power we have used to make multitudes 
believe that they could see at a distance without the 
use of their natural vision. This has given us al- 
most the power to work miracles." 

The late Dr. Carl Du Prel, an experienced student 
of the occult, wrote : — 

" If a hypnotist can make suggestion without the 
use of words, without his corporeality, spirits can 
surely do the same. If a suggestion can be made 
without the use of the body, it surely can be made 
without the possession of the body." 

From this point of view it must become evident 
that the habitual cultivation of mind-passivity — a 
practice now so increasingly prevailing in all sec- 
tions of society in connection with spiritistic experi- 
ments — may, in the course of time, become a source 
of the gravest possible mental and moral danger, and 
it is not at all improbable that the cause of many of 
those more obscure mental aberrations and delu- 
sions, which have so long puzzled psychologists and 
helped to fill our asylums, must be sought for in this 
direction. With the growth of spiritistic practices, 
and especially the elicitation of the subjective mani- 
festations, a steadily increasing number of minds 
must be laying themselves open to spirit-invasion 
and spirit-suggestion, and to be creating all the con- 
ditions favourable for an habitual, though perhaps 



178 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

unconscious, control and obsession. And the pos- 
sible consequences of this can easily be conjectured 
when it is borne in mind that, even if the spiritistic 
theory and explanation of the matter be adopted, it 
would still remain certain that the operating agents 
are, for the most part, intelligences of a low order, 
with low aims and desires and, in many demon- 
strated instances, with the deliberate intention and 
purpose of effecting the moral ruin of the sensitive. 

Mr. Hepworth Dixon, writing in New America, 
as far back as 1877, declared that " one-tenth part of 
the population of the New England States, one- 
fifteenth part of the population of New York, Ohio 
and Pennsylvania, lay open, more or less, to im- 
pressions from what they call the spirit-world." 

" Any mind," writes a thoughtful American oc- 
cultist, 1 " acting on yours from time to time will 
leave with yours the seeds and thoughts of its own 
errors, especially when it can control your body. 
Two minds have no business using one body. It is 
unnatural and unhealthy. But far worse is it for 
the medium to give communications from day to 
day from several on the unseen side, even though 
this is done by the agency of one spirit controlling 
him or her. Such mediums may absorb the mental 
conditions of those who come for sittings, and of 
the minds on the other side who desire to communi- 

1 Prentice Mulford. 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 179 

cate. They are visited by grief-stricken people who 
want to communicate with their friends. These 
friends are grieving also, and the medium stands be- 
tween the embodied and disembodied as a strainer 
through which are passed the dark and gloomy 
thoughts from both sides, and as thoughts are things 
and grieving and regretful thoughts are very harm- 
ful things, the medium's mind absorbs a great deal 
of this element. . . . Greed, selfishness, irrita- 
bility, anger, animality, are likewise brought them 
in thought by both mortal and spirit, etc. . . . 

" The mediumship that is known is small com- 
pared to that which is unknown and all about us. 
Legions of people are more or less controlled by 
minds about them in the unseen realm of life. Of 
this the insane furnish the most marked instance. 
The victim of insanity may have his or her spirit 
quite crowded out and forced from the body by the 
gradual encroachment and action on it of an insane 
spirit. . . . The cause and cure of insanity will 
never be known until people deem spiritual laws 
worthy of attention." 

4. As a fourth objection to the spiritistic theory 
must be urged the general effect of spiritistic prac- 
tices upon the sensitive and the investigators. 

This objection, too, has already incidentally been 
dealt with in some of the preceding sections, and 
from the description of the modus operandi em- 



180 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

ployed in the elicitation of the phenomena given on 
p. 59 et seq. it will have been inferred in what the 
physical and constitutional effects of these practices 
consist. The intelligences themselves admit that 
they cannot produce any perceptible manifestation 
in the material world without the agency of a certain 
kind of nerve energy or vital force which is taken 

y from the organisms of the sensitive and the sitters. 
They further declare that they cannot, under the 
most favourable circumstances, entirely replace 

s what has thus been abstracted, and that a certain 
degree of nervous exhaustion must therefore inev- 
itably attend all spirit-manifestations. 

The sensitive is constantly conscious of this loss 
of vitality attending even the moderate exercise of 
his mediumship, and he fully admits that its too 
frequent repetition would seriously imperil his phys- 
ical health and well-being. 

To what extent food and air and rest may be 
regarded as tending to repair this waste it is ob- 
viously impossible to determine, since we do not 
even know for certain in what this " psychic force " 
precisely consists and from what portion of the or- 
ganism it is withdrawn. Again, " unfavourable 
conditions," unavoidably and frequently created by 
the mental and moral attitude of some member or 
members of the circle, the indisposition of the sensi- 
tive, or the presence of " exceptionally low spirit-in- 
telligences," are admitted to add to the physical dif- 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 181 

ficulty and strain under which the sensitive is apt in 
any case to labour and to greatly increase the ex- 
haustive process which is going on. 

Physical and, of course, consequent mental ex- 
haustion and prostration must therefore be regarded 
as symptoms ordinarily and normally attending all 
objective and perceptible intercourse with the un- 
seen world. And it is surely extremely difficult to 
identify the dead, our lost friends and relatives, de- 
sirous above all others, we must conclude, of secur- 
ing our well-being and of shielding us from harm, 
with operations of this nature, and to believe that 
they will avail themselves of such perilous means as 
these in order to give evidence of their continued 
existence and presence with us, and that it is to them 
therefore that these physical troubles must be 
ascribed. 

Still more difficult of acceptance is the notion that 
such a process is to be regarded as a natural and 
normal one, in keeping with some wise and hitherto 
not generally known natural law, but now brought 
to light with a view to satisfying our highest needs 
and to once more convincing a doubting world of 
the continued existence of the human spirit in a 
world beyond the grave. 

But the force of these objections is still further 
increased when we come to consider the moral ef- 
fects invariably attending spiritistic practices. 



182 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

The common claim is that genuine spirit phe- 
nomena supply conclusive evidence of incorporeal 
existence and of the survival of the individual hu- 
man spirit of physical death, leading to sober and 
serious views of life and its responsibilities, and to 
an awakening of the spiritual sensibilities of even the 
most flippant and careless : that such evidence may 
therefore in fairness be regarded as a real aid to re- 
ligion, and that it is to be welcomed in an age which 
is characteristic for its intense materialism and for 
its habitual forgetfulness of " higher things," and 
of the true end and purpose of human life. 

At first sight this claim would seem to be a legiti- 
mate and reasonable one. There is no doubt what- 
ever that in many instances the first effect of the 
knowledge of spirit existence, brought home by these 
means, has been a good one. There is many a case 
on record in which some trivial but convincing mes- 
sage from the other world has been instrumental in 
awakening and stimulating moral energy, and in 
arousing the dormant faculties of the soul. 

But experience unfortunately teaches that this at- 
titude of the mind or soul is scarcely ever main- 
tained, and that it cannot, in any sense, be regarded 
as a stepping-stone to higher moral attainment and 
to the development of the true religious life. It is 
an undeniable fact that, however deep the first im- 
pression made by spiritistic experiences may be, that 
impression is apt to wear off after a very short time 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 183 

and to give place to a craving for new and more 
striking experiences, and for more frequent inter- 
course with the mysterious messengers of the spirit- 
world. 

And this habitual spirit-intercourse in its turn cre- 
ates a kind of familiarity with the things of the 
spirit-world which is highly calculated to breed con- 
tempt, and to produce in the soul a kind of progres- 
sive spiritual stagnation and paralysis. Indeed, 
there is no form of human research which is so apt 
to engross and fascinate the mind and to absorb it 
to the exclusion of all other obligations and consid- 
erations. It seems as though each single new ex- 
periment created but an appetite for a further and 
a better one, and went but to stimulate that well- 
known " craving for phenomena " which can never 
be stilled. There are thousands of persons in Eng- 
land at this present time who, although fully con- 
vinced of the reality of spirit phenomena, and thor- 
oughly acquainted with the manifold forms of 
occult manifestations, will nevertheless pass from se- 
ance to seance and from medium to medium, inces- 
santly on the hunt after fresh evidence and ceaseless 
seeking for new and more exciting " developments." 
It would seem as though ever learning they were 
never coming to a knowledge of the truth, and as 
though every fresh evidence was but a means of sug- 
gesting a fresh doubt and of creating a new and 
greater misgiving. 



1 84 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

And this craving for the abnormal, this ceaseless 
hunt after phenomena, is in itself calculated to in- 
juriously affect the moral nature, to debase and to 
lower it, and to lead to that state of mind in which 
spirit-intercourse and " sittings " and " good phe- 
nomena " become an end in themselves, the one in- 
teresting and stimulating pursuit of life and the one 
means of satisfactorily solving all its difficulties and 
problems. 

It was Judge Edmonds, the renowned American 
spiritist, who declared in one of his public lec- 
tures : — 

" We have to contend against our own fanaticism ; 
for I assure you from my own experience and ob- 
servation that the fascination of this intercourse is 
so great that its tendency is to lead men away from 
their proper judgment and to instil a spirit of fanat- 
icism most revolting to the calm and rational mind." 

But more instructive and suggestive still is the 
testimony of persons who, at one time ardent spir- 
itists, saw grounds, in later years, for reconsider- 
ing their position, and who, in the end, abandoned 
the spiritistic creed. 

" Spirit communion," writes one, 1 " soon absorbs 
all the time, faculties, hopes, fears, and desires of 
its devotees, and herein lies one of the greatest dan- 

1 Henry M. Hugunin, Spirit Possession, published in Syca- 
more, 111., U. S. A. 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 185 

gers of spiritualism. Infatuated by communication 
with the unseen inhabitants of the hidden world, 
the medium loses his or her interest in the things 
pertaining to everyday life and interest. A soft 
and pleasing atmosphere appears to surround them. 
The realities of flesh and blood are lost in ideal 
dreaming and there is no incentive to break away 
from a state of existence so agreeable, no matter 
how monstrous are the delusions practised by the 
spirits. Their consciences are as callous as if seared 
with a hot iron, sin has to them lost its wickedness, 
and they are willing dupes to unseen beings who 
delight to control their every faculty. Very seldom 
has a full-fledged spiritualist been able to compre- 
hend the necessity and blessedness of the religion of 
Jesus Christ, and to withdraw from the morbid con- 
ditions into which he has fallen. . . . 

" For about three months I was in the power of 
spirits, having a dual existence, and greatly tor- 
mented by their contradictory and unsatisfactory 
operations. . . . They tormented me to a very 
severe extent, and I desired to be freed from them. 
I lost much of my confidence in them, and their 
blasphemy and uncleanness shocked me. But they 
were my constant companions. I could not get rid 
of them. They tempted me to suicide and murder, 
and to other sins. I was fearfully beset and bewil- 
dered and deluded. There was no human help for 

me. They led me into some extravagances of ac- 
13 



1 86 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

tion, and to believe, in a measure, a few of their 
delusions, often combining religion and devilry in a 
most surprising manner; but, after all, beyond a 
certain extent they could not influence me. A 
higher power controlled them. Almost any sin that 
I had committed of any importance the spirits 
paraded before me, so that I could read it as out 
of a book," etc. 

In Spiritualism Unveiled we read the following 
testimony of a Dr. B. F. Hatch, formerly husband 
of the noted American trance medium, Mrs. Cora 
V. Hatch, and apparently for many years identified 
with that lady's public lecturing work : — 

" The extensive opportunity which I have had, and 
that, too, among the first class of spiritualists, of 
learning its nature and results, I think will enable 
me to lay just claims to being a competent witness 
in the matter. 

" I am afraid that what I have to say will offend 
many who are less acquainted with the phenomena 
than myself . . . but I write that the expe- 
rienced may more fully comprehend the dangers at- 
tending it. I am frequently asked if I still believe 
in the phenomena of spiritualism? I answer, Yes. 
I should deem it more than a waste of time to write 
about what does not exist. ... I have heard 
much of the improvement in individuals in conse- 
quence of a belief in spiritualism. With such I have 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 187 

had no acquaintance. But I have known many 
whose integrity of character and uprightness of pur- 
pose rendered them worthy examples to all around, 
but who, on becoming mediums, and giving up their 
individuality, also gave up every sense of honour and 
decency. A less degree of severity in this remark 
will apply to a large class of both mediums and be- 
lievers. There are thousands of high-minded and 
intelligent spiritualists who will agree with me that 
it is no slander in saying that the inculcation of no 
doctrines in this country (America) has ever shown 
such disastrous moral and social results as the spirit- 
ual theories. . . . For a long time I was swal- 
lowed up in its whirlpool of excitement, and com- 
paratively paid but little attention to its evils, 
believing that much good might result from the open- 
ing up of the avenues of spiritual intercourse. But, 
during the past eight months, I have devoted my 
attention to a critical investigation of its moral, 
social, and religious bearings, and I stand appalled 
before the revelations of its awful and damning 
realities and would flee from its influence as I 
would from the miasma which would destroy both 
body and soul. . . . With but little inquiry I 
have been able to count up over seventy mediums, 
most of whom have wholly abandoned their conjugal 
relations, others living with their paramours called 
' affinities/ others in promiscuous adultery, and still 
others exchanged partners. Old men and women, 



1 88 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

who have passed the meridian of life, are not unfre- 
quently the victims of this hallucination. Many of 
the mediums lose all sense of moral obligation and 
yield to whatever influence may for the time be 
brought to bear upon them. Their pledges, the in- 
tegrity of their oaths, are no more reliable than the 
shifting breezes of the whirlwind, for they are made 
to yield to the powers which for the time control 
them." 

The testimony of another former spiritualist is as 
follows : — 

" After all our investigations, for seven or eight 
years, we must say that we have as much evidence 
that there are lying spirits as we have that there are 
any spirits at all . . . the doctrines they teach 

. . are most contradictory and absurd. There 
are those . . . who have become and are be- 
coming victims of a sensual philosophy under the 
influence of what is termed Spiritualism. . . 
Spiritualism, in a very large class of mind, tends to 
beget a kind of moral and religious atheism/' 

But we have evidence nearer home w T hich goes to 
indicate that the moral and mental dangers attend- 
ing spiritistic practices are recognised by men well 
qualified to form an accurate judgment of the mat- 
ter and to speak with authority. As far back as 
1877 Dr. L. S. Forbes Winslow wrote in Spiritual- 
istic Madness: — 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 189 

" Ten thousand unfortunate people are at the 
present time confined in lunatic asylums on account 
of having tampered with the supernatural." And, 
quoting an American journal, he goes on to say: 
" Not a week passes in which we do not hear that 
some of these unfortunates destroy themselves by 
suicide, or are removed to a lunatic asylum. The 
mediums often manifest signs of an abnormal con- 
dition of their mental faculties, and among certain 
of them are found unequivocal indications of a true 
demoniacal possession. The evil spreads rapidly 
and it will produce in a few years frightful results. 
. . . Two French authors of spiritualistic works, 
who wrote Le Monde Spirituel and Sauvons le genre 
humain, died insane in an asylum; these two men 
were distinguished in their respective professions: 
one as a highly scientific man, the other as an ad- 
vocate well learned in the law. These individuals 
placed themselves in communication with the spirits 
by means of tables. I could quote many such in- 
stances where men of the highest ability have, so to 
speak, neglected all and followed the doctrines of 
Spiritualism only to end their days in the lunatic 
asylums." 

A little while ago a spiritist of many years' stand- 
ing wrote to the present writer as follows : — 

" I must admit that I have lately had many mis- 
givings with regard to the advisability of any but 



190 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

the sanest and strongest-minded dabbling in Spirit- 
ism. Since ... I have had one very nasty 
experience, so I feel in honour bound to stop indis- 
criminate propaganda till I have thought it over. I 
ought to tell you of a striking confirmation I have 
received of your theory of personation," etc. 

And a few months later : — 

" I have given up going to seances, as it leads to 
nothing but mental confusion. I don't think I would 
even go to a materialisation, much as I should like 
it, as it affects my heart so much. I feel weak for 
three days after; besides there is nothing to be got 
from the tramps who come to the average seance." 

Another correspondent writes : — 

" In confirmation of your position I was told by a 
photographer in Tasmania, who had had much ex- 
perience and who had been present when spirits ma- 
terialised, that he had given it up because all the 
mediums he had known had ' gone wrong.' They 
had practically become slaves to the forces they first 
seemed to use." 

A young officer describes his experiences as fol- 
lows : — 

" My first experiments with my planchette proved 
unsuccessful. After a time it certainly began to 
move, but the result was merely a set of curves or 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 191 

lines over the paper. After a time, however, I found 
that it wrote words and phrases, and sometimes 
sense, sometimes otherwise. In one or two in- 
stances some rather startling answers were given — 
so startling, indeed, that I, who was at one time 
sceptical, now recoiled from the planchette in terror. 
However, fascination and curiosity soon overcame 
this, and I persevered. After a time I found that 
writing by means of this planchette affected me 
greatly. It gave me a feeling of intense nausea, 
and always brought on a tired and worn-out feeling. 
Also when I went to bed I could not sleep, and used 
to keep on fancying that there was someone else in 
the room. My nerves were all shaky, and I felt 
that I was no longer my own master. . . . To 
this day I am frequently subject to nervous depres- 
sion and attacks of melancholia.'' 

A medical man residing in the north of England, 
who describes himself as " one who has probed the 
whole subject to the bottom, and .who knows both 
its weak and its strong points — who, in fact, de- 
voted to its study and spread the best years of his 
life," strongly denounces the entire movement on ac- 
count of the mental, moral, and physical perils at-_ 
tending it. 

For reasons already indicated, the better portion 
of the material which has recently come into the 



1 92 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

writer's possession, and which so strongly corrobo- 
rates the position here taken up, cannot unfortu- 
nately be given to the public. The evidential force 
which this material possesses as a whole is almost 
overwhelming, and it would seem to cut away every 
inch of ground from underneath the spiritistic the- 
ory. 

But that, in scientific quarters too, the grave perils 
attending spiritistic practices and the exercise of the 
mediumistic faculty are beginning to be recognised 
may be gathered from references incidentally occur- 
ring in the published writings of men prominently 
connected with psychical research, and especially 
from a little pamphlet by a Vice-President 1 of the 
Society for Psychical Research, which has already 
been referred to. 

Thus Dr. Van Eeden, in concluding his paper 
read before the Fourth International Congress of 
Psychology in Paris in 1891, gave expression to the 
following weighty words : — 

" At present I must conclude with the reflection 
that we have in the subject before us a region 
scarcely at all explored, full of interest, and without 
discernible limits. In this region there exist possi- 
bilities of observation, and even of experiment, on 
methodical and scientific lines. But therein also lie 
risks of error more serious than in any other de- 

1 Professor Barrett. 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 193 

partment of science. And not merely of error, 
scientific and intellectual, but also of moral error. 
It is possible to construct hypotheses, religious es- 
chatologies, according to taste, and the passive me- 
dium will exhibit your machineries in full function. 
It is this consideration which should make us pru- 
dent even to exaggeraton. And it is this which 
seems, indeed, to justify the orthodox religions in 
condemning the evocation of spirits as immoral, as 
infringing upon secrets hidden from man by the 
Eternal;' 

Professor Barrett, while insisting upon the right 
of science to investigate the phenomena, and while 
realising the importance of their bearing upon the 
great subject of the future life, is nevertheless con- 
strained to utter the following warning 1 : — 

" It is, of course, as true now as then (the times 
of the Hebrews) that these practices are dangerous 
in proportion as they lead us to surrender our reason 
or our will to the dictates of an invisible and often- 
times masquerading spirit, or as they absorb and 
engross us to the neglect of our daily duties, or as 
they tempt us to forsake the sure but arduous path- 
way of knowledge and of progress for an enticing 
maze, which lures us round and round. In fine, 
everything that invades the domain of reason and 
tends to displace it from its throne was condemned 

1 Necromancy and Ancient Magic. 



i 9 4 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

by these virile, far-seeing prophets. We can hear 
them saying, ' Away with your portents and charms, 
away with your superstitious rites and observances, 
away with your slavery to muttering spirits, and 
fight the battle of life with the reason the Almighty 
has given you and in the consciousness and strength 
of His presence. . . .' " 

For science generally the moral aspect of the sub- 
ject of course does not exist, and it is scarcely from 
this quarter that we can hope for a right and wise 
judgment in the matter. For the ordinary psychi- 
cal student it is solely a question of interesting phe- 
nomena and of the observation and examination of 
those phenomena. With their bearing upon the 
world's belief, or its moral and religious life, he has 
little inclination to concern himself. His interest is 
not unsimilar to that of the vivisectionist, who cares 
little for what may happen to the subject, so long as 
the experiment itself is successful and by its means 
some secret is wrested from nature or some new 
fact brought to light. 

5. A fifth and perhaps still more fatal argument 
against the spiritistic theory is the contradictory 
character of the teaching given by the intelligences. 

In order to fully appreciate the force of this ob- 
jection it is necessary to bear in mind what the ad- 
mitted claims of modern spiritism are. To put it 
briefly : the intelligences, who by the various means 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 195 

described, seek communication with us, invariably 
claim that they are sent to us on a mission of in- 
struction and enlightenment; that their chief aim 
and purpose is to convince a manifestly sceptical 
world of the existence of a future state and of the 
survival of the individual soul — of the consequent 
great and constant responsibility of life; that they 
desire to free the human mind from the bondage 
of errors and misconceptions created by human and 
imperfect creeds, and to lay the foundation for a 
truer and nobler philosophy of life and for a wider 
and broader and more inclusive religious faith. 

There is scarcely a message, emanating from these 
mysterious operators, in which some such claim as 
this is not maintained or implied, and from which it 
may not be inferred that, as Mr. Stainton-Moses 
puts it, " the abnormal conditions produced by the 
action of spirit in this world are merely the phe- 
nomenal manifestations attendant on the close of 
one dispensation, era, or epoch, and the ushering in 
of a new regime, with wider spiritual knowledge and 
clearer insight into Truth." 

" Spiritualism, in fact," as the same writer points 
out in another place, " comes as a revolutionary 
element to an age that is ripe for it, dealing, like that 
great movement of which it is the nineteenth-cen- 
tury analogue, with all the relations and inter-rela- 
tions of man with man and man with God. . . . 



196 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

Doubtless the time has not yet come when it is 
proper to pronounce any dogmatic opinions. The 
work of destruction must necessarily precede the 
work of construction, and if the destructive process 
be long and arduous, the excuse must be found in 
the fact that man has disguised God's truth so deeply 
and is so wedded to his inventions that it is not easy 
to disabuse him." 

It is impossible, in the face of words like these, to 
misconceive the claims of Spiritism, or to suppose 
that there is, in the minds of those really speaking 
with authority, anything approaching the notion of 
compromise with existing religious ideas. It was 
Mr. Stainton-Moses himself who declared that the 
word spiritism stands for revolution, not simply re- 
form, and that revolution is, it would seem, of an 
exceptionally radical and thorough-going charac- 
ter. 

Now, whatever views we may be disposed to en- 
tertain as to the reasonableness of so great and mo- 
mentous a claim, it is obvious that no rational man 
can be expected to proceed to its serious examina- 
tion, unless there be a fulfilment of certain prelim- 
inary and necessary conditions. 

Acceptance of a message, fraught with such im- 
mense importance to mankind, demands : — 

1. That we should be able to identify the 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 197 

messengers who bring it and who claim that they 
are the spirits of the dead. 

2. That these messengers should be clearly shown 
to have the power and authority to convey such 
revolutionary disclosures to us. 

3. That they should themselves be of a character 
corresponding to the moral and intellectual import 
of their message. 

4. That their method of communication should 
be a reasonable and beneficent one. 

5. That there should be agreement and uniform- 
ity in the respective messengers and in the charac- 
ter and substance of their message. 

How far the first four of these conditions may be 
considered as fulfilled will have been gathered from 
what has been said in the preceding pages and from 
the evidence which has been adduced. And it can- 
not certainly be with any feeling of confidence, but, 
on the contrary, with one of the strongest possible 
misgiving, that we approach the examination of the 
fifth and last point — the question as to the charac- 
ter of the teaching conveyed by these spirit-mes- 
sages. 

And here, too, it has to be admitted that our mis- 
givings find the fullest possible confirmation and 
justification, for, here too, we do not anywhere find 
ourselves on solid ground. On the contrary, vague- 
ness, contradiction, and mystification surround us on 



198 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

every side, and it would seem to be an utterly im- 
possible thing to construct, from the mass of ma- 
terial at our disposal, anything approaching any 
clear and definite truth. 

On the great subject of Religion, of man's duty 
towards God, the spirits are hopelessly at variance, 
and it is a well-known fact that, in reply to questions 
formulated with a view to eliciting a clear and un- 
equivocal statement, the most unsatisfactory and 
contradictory answers are apt to be given. They 
teach one religion in America, another in England, 
another in France, and there is underlying these no 
single principle that would enable us to harmonise 
them or to deduce from them some simple and ele- 
mentary truth. 

Some spirits, for instance, teach universal re- 
incarnation; others deny it. The spirits speaking 
through the mediumship of Allan Kardec in France, 
of Stainton-Moses in England, of Swedenborg in 
Sweden, of Mrs. Piper in America, have different 
and mutually contradictory information to impart, 
and could not possibly have drawn that information 
from a common source. The communications, con- 
veyed through these respective mediums, would seem 
to reflect and to express some latent belief or sub- 
jective creed of the sensitive himself, rather than 
any objective truth universally known and under- 
stood in the world of spirit, and disclosed for the 
moral advancement and enlightenment of mankind. 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 199 

On all minor points, such as the conditions per- 
taining to the future world, and our life in it after 
death, the same confusion and contradiction prevail, 
and it would be difficult for the mind most favour- 
ably disposed towards the spiritistic position to in- 
troduce anything like order into the chaos of con- 
flicting ideas, or to exhibit any single statement in 
reference to the unseen world and its life, respecting 
which there can be shown to be absolute unanimity. 

How grotesquely absurd and contradictory these 
communications are, may be gathered from a sum- 
mary of spirit-teaching given by Dr. William Potter 
(at one time himself a spiritualist) in a volume en- 
titled, Spiritism as it is, 

" The teachings and theories given through the 
different manifestations," he writes, " are as various 
as it is possible to conceive. Indeed, few of the 
most devoted ' seekers after truth under difficulties ' 
are aware of the endless contradictions and absurdi- 
ties that are mixed up with the most exalted truths 
and the most profound philosophies. We have room 
for only a tithe of them, for we have not yet found 
the first question or subject about which they do 
not contradict each other. . . . 

" We are taught that God is a person ; that He is 
impersonal; that He is omnipotent; that He is gov- 
erned by nature's laws ; that everything is God ; that 
there is no God ; that we are gods. We are taught 
that the soul is eternal ; that it commences its exist- 



200 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

ence at conception, at birth, at maturity, at old age. 
That all are immortal, that some are immortal, that 
none are immortal. That the soul is a winged 
monad in the centre of the brain, that it gets tired, 
and goes down into the stomach to rest; that it is 
material, that it is immaterial; that it is unchange- 
able, that it changes like the body, that it dies with 
the body ; that it develops the body, that it is devel- 
oped by the body; that it is human in form; that 
it is in but one place at a time, that it is in all places 
at the same time. 

" We are taught that the spirit-world is on earth 
— just above the air — beyond the milky way. 
That it has but one sphere, three spheres, six spheres, 
seven spheres, thirty-six spheres, an infinite number 
of spheres. That it is a real, tangible world; that 
it is all a creation of the mind of the beholder, and 
appears different to different spirits. That it is in- 
habited by animals, birds, etc. ; that they do not in- 
habit it. That it is a sea of ether, that it is a plain, 
that it has mountains, lakes, and valleys, that it is a 
belt around the earth. We are taught that spirits 
eat food — live by absorption, live on magnetism, 
thoughts, love; that they control media by will- 
power, by magnetism, by entering media, by stand- 
ing by their side, by an influence beyond our atmos- 
phere, by permission of the Lord. 

" We are taught that spirits converse by thought- 
reading, by oral language. That their music is har- 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 201 

mony of soul — that it is instrumental and vocal. 
That they live single ; in groups of nine. That they 
marry without having offspring ; that they have off- 
spring by mortals ; that they have offspring by each 
other. That their marriage is temporal; that it is 
eternal. That spirits never live again in the flesh; 
that they do return and enter infant bodies, and live 
many lives in the flesh. That some are born first in 
the spheres, and afterwards on earth in the flesh. 
That the true affinity is born in the spirit-world at 
the same time that the counterpart is born on earth. 
That all spirits are good ; that some are bad ; that all 
progress, that some progress, that none progress. 

" We are taught that there is no high, no low, no 
good, no bad. That murder is right, lying is right, 
slavery is right, adultery is right. That whatever 
is, is right. That nothing we can know can injure 
the soul or retard its progress. That it is wrong to 
blame any ; that none should be punished ; that man 
is a machine, and not to blame for his conduct. 

" We are taught that the spirit of the tree 

exists in perfect form after the tree is burnt. That 

monads are God's thoughts, and go through all 

forms of rocks, trees, animals, and at last become 

men. That we see by a positive radiation that goes 

out from the eyes and touches things. That 

thoughts are living entities, and may flow down the 
14 



202 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

arm on to the paper; if that is burnt they float 
around. That spirit is substance in absolute con- 
densation; that matter is substance whose particles 
never touch. That all earthly marriage is of the 
flesh, and must end ; and that the true affinity is of a 
spirit mate, born at the same time in spirit-life that 
the counterpart is born on earth. 

"All the above teachings, adds the author, we 
have heard given by media or from communica- 
tions." 

The writer's own experience and research thor- 
oughly confirm the accuracy of this very unique and 
typical summary, and although he fully admits that 
we do occasionally meet with intelligences which will 
give remarkably sensible and rational accounts of 
the other world and its life, and which will display 
a considerable amount of consistency and reason- 
ableness in their statements and assertions, such 
statements can, nevertheless, in each single instance, 
be shown to be contradicted by some assertion on 
the same subject, made by a different intelligence 
and through the agency of a different sensitive. 

Instances, too, are known in which a spirit-intelli- 
gence will make a communication to the effect that 
the teaching which he had received and imparted 
during his past earth-life, and in his capacity as a 
sensitive, had been disproved by personal experience 
gained after entrance into the spirit-world, and that 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 203 

such false teaching was to be attributed to the opera- 
tion of beings of a low order, abounding, it is de- 
clared, in the regions or spheres immediately sur- 
rounding this earth plane. Many cases of this kind 
are on record. That of the late Dr. Anna Kingsford 
occupied the attention of the spiritistic Press not so 
very long ago. Her spirit, communicating after its 
departure from the body, was reported to have dis- 
owned the better portion of what she had taught in 
the course of her supposed past earth-life. 

A still more striking and recent instance of this 
kind is that of the late Mr. Stainton-Moses, which 
has already been referred to in connection with the 
problem of " spirit-identity,'' and which is recorded 
by Professor Newbold in the Proceedings of the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research. 

The automatic messages received through the 
agency of this remarkable medium, and purporting 
to emanate from spirits of a very high order, have, 
as already pointed out, been epoch-making in their 
influence upon spiritistic thought and philosophy, 
and have, in their completed form, become a kind 
of Bible to all orthodox spiritists. The book has, 
in fact, been accepted as the best and most intelligent 
exposition of spiritistic belief, and as the most con- 
sistent and trustworthy account of other- world con- 
ditions and other- world life. 

But, unfortunately in this instance too, certain 
subsequent disclosures, declared to be after-death 



1 



204 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

revelations of the same Stainton-Moses, but, in any 
case, communications emanating from the spirit- 
world and from spirit-intelligences, disown the ac- 
curacy of an important part of the previous " teach- 
ings," and exhibit the utter untrustworthiness of 
messages of even this higher order. The following 
is Professor Romaine Newbold's account of the mat- 
ter: — 

" ' George Pelham ' " (a spirit-intelligence) is 
telling Professor Newbold how the future state of 
the soul is affected by its earthly life — 

" ' It is only the body that sins, and not the soul/ " 

" Professor N. : ' Does the soul carry with it into 
its new life all its passions and animal appetites? ' 

" G. P.: ' Oh no, indeed; not at all. Why, my 
good friend and scholar, you would have this world 
of ours a decidedly material one if it were so.' 
" Prof. N.: ' Do you know of Stainton-Moses? ' 
" G. P.: ' No, not very much. Why? ' 
" Prof. N.: ' Did you ever know of him, or know 
what he did ? ' 

" G. P.: ' I only have an idea from having met 
him here/ 

" Prof. N. : ' Can you tell me what he said ? ' 
" G. P.: 'No; only that he was Mr. Stainton- 
Moses. I found him for " E " and Hodgson/ 
" Prof. N.: ' Did you tell Hodgson this? ' 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 205 

"iff. P.: 'I do not think so.' 
"Prof. N.: 'Did he say anything about his me- 
diumship ? ' 
"G.P.: 'No.' 

"Prof. N.: 'His writings claimed that the soul 
carried with it all its passions and appetites, and was 
very slowly purified of them.' " 1 

^•The original "teaching" on the two points here referred 
to, and conveyed by the high intelligences through the medium- 
ship of Stainton-Moses during his lifetime, is as follows: — 

I. "As the soul lives in the earth-life, so does it go to the 
spirit-life. Its tastes, its predilections, its habits, its antipa- 
thies, they are with it still. It is not changed save in the 
accident of being freed from the body. The soul that on 
earth has been low in taste and impure in habit, does not 
change its nature by passing from the earth-sphere, any more 
than the soul that has been truthful, pure, and progressive, 
becomes base and bad by death. Wonderful that you do not 
recognise this truth! You would not fancy a pure and up- 
right soul degenerating after it has passed from your gaze. 
Yet you fable a purification of that which has become by habit 
impure and unholy, hating God and goodness and choosing 
sensuality and sin. The one is no more possible than the 
other. The soul's character has been a daily, hourly growth. 
It has not been an overlaying of the soul with that which 
can be thrown off. Rather it has been a weaving into the 
nature of the spirit that which becomes part of itself, identified 
with its nature, inseparable from its character. It is no more 
possible that that character should be undone, save by the 
slow process of obliteration, than that the woven fabric should 
be rudely cut and the threads remain intact. 

II. "These earth-bound spirits retain much of their earthly 
passions and propensity. The cravings of the body are not 
extinct, though the power to gratify them is withdrawn. 
The drunkard retains his old thirst, but exaggerated, aggra- 
vated by the impossibility of slaking it. It burns within him, 



206 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

" G. P. : ' It is all untrue/ 

" Prof. N. : ' And that the souls of the dead hover 
over the earth, goading sinners on to their own de- 
struction/ 

the unquenched desire, and urges him to frequent the haunts 
of his old vices, and to drive wretches like himself to fur- 
ther degradation. In them he lives again his old life and 
drinks in satisfaction, grim and devilish, from the excesses 
which he causes them to commit. And so his vice perpet- 
uates itself, and swells the crop of sin and sorrow. The 
besotted wretch, goaded on by agencies he cannot see, sinks 
deeper and deeper into the mire. His innocent wife and 
babe starve and weep in silent agony, and near them hovers, 
and over them broods, the guardian angel who has no power 
to reach the sodden wretch who wears their lives and breaks 
their hearts. 

" This we shadow forth to you when we tell you that the 
earthbound spirit lives again its life of excess in the excesses 
of those whom it is enabled to drive to ruin. . . . 

" Round the gin shops of your cities, dens of vice, haunted 
by miserable besotted wretches, lost to self-respect and sense 
of shame, hover the spirits who in the flesh were lovers of 
drunkenness and debauchery. They lived the drunkard's life 
in the body, they live it over again now, and gloat with 
fiendish glee over the downward course of the spirit whom 
they are leagued to ruin. Could you but see how in spots 
where the vicious congregate the dark spirits throng, you 
would know something of the mystery of evil. It is the in- 
fluence of these debased spirits which tends so much to ag- 
gravate the difficulty of retracing lost steps, which makes the 
descent of Avernus so easy, the return so toilsome. The 
slopes of Avernus are dotted with spirits hurrying to their 
destruction, sinking with mad haste to ruin. Each is the 
centre of a lot of malignant spirits, who find their joy in 
wrecking souls and dragging them down to their own misera- 
ble level," etc, 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 207 

" G. P.: ' Not so. Not at (all) so. I claim to 
understand this, and it is emphatically not so. Sin- 
ners are sinners only in one life/ " 

June 20th, 1895. 

" Prof. N. : ' Can you bring Stainton-Moses 
here?' 

"G. P.: 'I will do my best/ 

"Prof. N.: 'Is he far advanced?' 

" G. P. : ' Oh no ; I should say not. He will have 
to think for awhile yet/ 

"Prof. N.: 'What do you mean?' 

" G. P. : ' Well, have you forgotten all I told you 
before? ' 

" Prof. N. : ' You mean about progression by re- 
pentance ? ' 

"G. P.: 'Certainly I do/ 

" Prof. N.: ' Wasn't he good? ' 

" G. P.: ' Yes, but not perfect by any means.' 

" Prof. N. : ' Was he a true medium ? ' 

" G. P.: 'True! yes, very true.' 

"Prof. N.: 'Had he light?' 

" G. P.: ' Yes/ 

"Prof. N.: ' Yet not all true.' 

" G. P. : ' Yes, but his light was very true, yet he 
made a great many mistakes and deceived him- 
self.' " 

At the close of the sitting. 
" Prof. N.: 'I want to see Stainton-Moses/ 



208 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

" G. P.: ' Well, if I do not bring him do not be 
disappointed, because I will, if I can, find him.' " 

June 21st, 1895. 
Professor Newbold asked again about Stainton- 
Moses, but " G. P." explained that " he was not in 
his surroundings yet." 

June 22nd, 1895. 

" G. P. : ' Here is Stainton-Moses. Do you wish 
to see him ? ' 

" Prof. N. : ' Tell him I have read with interest 
his book Spirit Teaching, but find in it statements 
apparently inconsistent with what you say; and I 
would like to know his explanation of the fact.' 

" Stainton-Moses: ' Believe you in me and my 
teachings ? ' 

" Prof. N.: ' I was much impressed with them, 
Mr. Moses, especially as your statements and Mr. 
Pelham's agree in the main. But how about the in- 
consistencies ? ' 

" Stn.-Moses: ' Contradict the genuine statements 
made by our friend Pelham, whom I am delighted 
to meet ? ' 

(( Prof. N.: 'I did not say contradict; although 
it appears so. Can you explain them ? ' 

" Stn.-Moses: ' 1 do not understand your ques- 
tion/ 

" Prof. N.: 'Will you explain these seeming con- 
tradictions ? ' 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 209 

" Stn.-Moses: 'What are they, please, sir?' 

" Prof. N. : ' You taught that evil spirits tempt 
sinners to their own destruction ? ' 

" Stn.-Moses: i I have found out differently since 
I came over here. This particular statement, given 
me by my friends as their medium when I was in 
the body, is not true.' 

"Prof. JSP-.: 'The second is that the soul carries 
its passions and appetites with it.' 

"Stn.-Moses: ' Material passions. Untrue. It 
is not so. I have found out the difference.' " 

There is, perhaps, no case on record which so 
clearly illustrates the difficulty here referred to, and 
the utter untrustworthiness of the communications 
received from the spirit-world. In this case the 
subject with which these respective spirit communi- 
cations deal, can scarcely be said to be one of 
secondary importance only, or one on which even 
a disembodied spirit might be expected to preserve 
an open mind, or on which he might, after a few 
years' stay in the spirit-world, be expected to remain 
in comparative ignorance. On the contrary, it is a 
subject of the highest possible importance, and one 
directly bearing upon man's spiritual life both here 
and hereafter. It is, moreover, one connected with 
the constant personal experience of the spirit him- 
self, and consequently one on which that spirit must 



210 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

be expected to possess immediate and very accurate 
knowledge. 

The intelligences, who in the first instance make 
the disclosure, claim to be spirits of a very high or- 
der, who have themselves passed long ages in the 
spirit-world, and who in their capacity as the ap- 
pointed teachers of benighted humanity, may be sup- 
posed to have themselves accurate information as to 
spirit-world states and spirit-world life. 

The disclosures which they make are clear and 
definite and emphatic, and, in the opinion of the 
sensitive through whom they are made, so reason- 
able and convincing and so intelligently connected 
with other disclosures of a similar kind that, after 
a severe mental conflict, he is induced to accept them 
and to set them before his disciples as great and 
most valuable truths. 

The sensitive himself is admittedly a person of 
high integrity, fully conscious of the immense im- 
portance of the subject, and throughout guided by 
the highest and best of motives. He admits the dis- 
closure received to be in no sense due to any ab- 
normal action of his own subconscious mind, and 
to be exercising a revolutionary effect upon his 
religious and intellectual life. 

After his release from the body this sensitive 
communicates through another sensitive of similar 
high standing and integrity and in the presence of 
scientists well qualified to distinguish the true from 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 211 

the spurious, and themselves convinced of the iden- 
tity of at least one spirit-intelligence, " George Pel- 
ham/' which again vouches for the identity of the 
communicator with that of the deceased Stainton- 
Moses. 

We have surely here the most favourable circum- 
stances conceivable for the transmission of a clear 
and consistent spirit-message, and for the confirma- 
tion of the truth of that message on the part of 
the individual who in earth-life was instrumental in 
eliciting it. We have an instance, in fact, in which 
the spirit-intelligences are given a splendid oppor- 
tunity of exhibiting the identity of their ideas and 
aims, their integrity and their unanimity as to the 
truths which they declare to be commissioned to 
impart. 

But what do we find? The discarnate sensitive, 
on the grounds of his now personal experience and 
immediate knowledge of the other state, disowns the 
truth of the disclosures made to him and through 
him during his earth-life, and deliberately declares 
that all that has been said on a particular subject by 
the high intelligences is untrue. The " high intelli- 
gences " themselves, as will have been seen from 
what has been said on p. 134, etc., when they can be 
got to communicate, are unable to identify them- 
selves by disclosing the names which in the lifetime 
of the sensitive they declared to have been their 
former earth-names. 



212 THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

It is unnecessary to further comment upon an 
occurrence of this kind which is but typical of what 
is constantly being experienced in the course of 
spiritistic experiments and investigations. The dif- 
ficulty remains, from whatever point of view we 
may be disposed to look at it, and that difficulty can 
only be escaped by those whose minds are inacces- 
sible to the force of evidence, and whose conclu- 
sions are established upon feeling and sentiment 
rather than upon truth and fact. 

" If ' Imperator ' and his assistants," writes Dr. 
Walter Leaf, in an incidental reference to this case 
in the most recent issue of the Proceedings, " if 
' Imperator ' and his assistants are really discarnate 
personalities they are lying spirits." But Imperator 
and his assistants are the highest and most con- 
sistent intelligences that have ever communicated 
from the spirit-world, and it is upon their commu- 
nications and " Teachings " that the creed and phi- 
losophy of Modern Spiritism has in large measure 
constructed itself. 

And if the best and most plausible communica- 
tions hitherto received from the spirit-world are 
shown to be vague, self-contradictory and untrust- 
worthy, the claim of their authors as to their high 
and exalted mission, and as to the purity and integ- 
rity of their aims, surely falls to the ground, and 
the greatest stumbling-block possible is placed in the 
way of acceptance of the spiritistic theory. 



THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 213 

That theory, indeed, utterly breaks down when it 
is fully and fairly tested by its own evidence, for to 
the mind still free from prepossessions and capable 
of estimating the weight and bearing of evidence, it 
would seem to be impossible to think of the dead as 
the originators of these mysterious communications, 
and of the moral and intellectual confusion and 
chaos necessarily resulting from them. 



VI 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED AND PHILOS- 
OPHY 

IT is a remarkable circumstance that, in spite of 
the inconsistent and wholly unreliable character 
of the " disclosure " habitually made by the intelli- 
gences claiming to be the spirits of the dead, there 
has nevertheless grown up a distinctive creed or 
spirit-philosophy which may, in a sense, be said to 
have its origin in and to be based upon these dis- 
closures. 

The explanation of this is, in the writer's opin- 
ion, to be found in the fact that, while no kind of 
oneness of idea or principle, in the matter of clear 
and positive teaching, can be found to be underlying 
these various spirit-messages, there is nevertheless 
a constant and remarkable unanimity in them on 
their negative side — in the bearing of their con- 
tents upon accepted beliefs and upon the traditional 
creed of Christendom. 

The modern spiritist is, in respect of all definite 
dogmatic belief, an eclectic. He teaches that all the 
world's creeds, Christianity included, contain in 
them elements of truth and of good, that these ele- 

214 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 215 

ments have, however, come to be mixed up with so 
much that is erroneous and human, that only spe- 
cially enlightened souls, in particular " advanced 
spirits," are capable of distinguishing the wheat 
from the chaff, and that it is only by the progressive 
enlightenment of the intellect and by a process of in- 
ward purification that all will ultimately come to 
know the true from the false. The light of truth, 
in fact, having of necessity and in each single in- 
stance, passed through imperfect channels, through 
media little qualified to transmit it and themselves 
intermingling it with elements and interpretations of 
their own, has become distorted in its passage and 
has in consequence brought but a very partial and 
imperfect illumination. Subsequent theological and 
philosophical speculations have tended to still fur- 
ther obscure it. " The assumption, therefore," say 
the spirits, " that any one religion which may com- 
mend itself to any one race, in any portion of your 
globe, has a monopoly of divine truth, is a human 
fiction born of men's vanity and pride." 

Another element which has largely entered into 
the composition of the spirit-creed, and from which 
it has received a vast amount of vitality and support, 
is the scientific doctrine of evolution, of the slow and 
progressive ascent and development of human life, 
the universal law of adaptation to and corre- 
spondence with environment, the survival of the fit- 
test, the steady advance from a lower to a higher 



216 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

scale of moral and intellectual life and being. It 
is, at least, in its bearing upon and application to the 
spirit-life and the spirit-world that this theory of de- 
velopment has found favour amongst spiritists, and 
that we find it permeating and underlying all their 
statements and writings. Thus the main doctrines 
of the new spirit-religion are, as Professor A. R. 
Wallace puts it in his book : — 

" That after death man's spirit survives in an 
ethereal body, gifted with new powers but mentally 
and morally the same individual as when clothed in 
flesh. That he commences from that moment a 
course of apparently endless progression, which is 
rapid just in proportion as his mental and moral 
faculties have been exercised and cultivated while on 
earth. That his comparative happiness or misery 
will depend entirely on himself. Just in proportion 
as all his higher human faculties have taken part in 
all his pleasures here, will he find himself contented 
and happy in a state of existence in which they 
will have the fullest exercise. While he who has 
depended more on the body than on the mind for 
his pleasures, will, when the body is no more, feel 
a grievous want, and must slowly and painfully de- 
velop his intellectual and moral nature till its exer- 
cise shall become easy and pleasurable. Neither 
punishments nor rewards are meted out by an ex- 
ternal power, but each one's condition is the natural 
and inevitable sequence of his condition here. He 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 217 

starts again from the level of moral and intellectual 
development to which he had raised himself while 
on earth " (pp. 115, 116). 

It is by the importation of these principles, to- 
gether with some elements of theosophical teaching, 
into a system of ethical thought retaining some few 
fragments of distinctly Christian doctrine, that a 
creed has come to be formed which claims to satisfy 
the intellectual as well as the religious side of hu- 
man nature, and to present us with a rational, con- 
sistent, and highly intelligible view of man and of 
his destiny — which furnishes, according to Profes- 
sor Wallace, " a more intelligible, consistent, and 
harmonious theory of the future state of man than 
either religion or philosophy has yet put forth." 

The spirit-creed, then, being as free from reli- 
gious dogmatism as any creed can well be, may be 
said to be in the truest sense a child of the age, an 
adaptation to and expression of the peculiar mental 
tendencies of the times, and it is certainly in those 
ideas and tendencies that it lives and moves and has 
its being. It is its large-heartedness, its freedom 
from all intellectual restraints, its marvellous adapta- 
bility and " comprehensiveness," that constitute its 
chief characteristics and that make it the pride and 
glory of the modern spiritist. 

Acknowledge but that the human spirit survives 
the dissolution of the body, that it enters immedi- 
ately after death upon a process of progressive edu- 
15 



218 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

cation and evolution, and that it can, under favour- 
able conditions, communicate with those left behind 
on earth, and the standard of spiritistic orthodoxy 
will be most amply complied with. All other mat- 
ters are of secondary importance and of very little 
account, and respecting them the utmost freedom 
may be allowed to human thought and speculation. 

Thus, as regards the ultimate Source and Cause 
of all things, the predominating mental attitude 
amongst spiritists, is the agnostic one. The true 
spiritist will say that he does not and cannot know. 
He holds that all the received views on this point 
have their origin in purely subjective and anthropo- 
morphic conceptions, and that they are of necessity 
unreliable and misleading. In his view, the human 
mind, with its limited powers, is not capable, in its 
present stage of development, of penetrating into 
this mystery and of apprehending the truth, even 
if it were disclosed, and the probability is that ages 
upon ages will have to pass, and incarnations and 
developments innumerable will have to be gone 
through before its knowledge on this subject will 
have advanced in any appreciable measure. Per- 
haps it will never know. 

The " higher intelligences," while accommodating 
themselves to the common belief and speaking in 
terms of personality of the Deity, really support 
this view and declare that they themselves, al- 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 219 

though many long years in the spirit-world, have 
not really attained to any truer and fuller knowledge 
of God. And no spirit communicating with earth 
pretends to have seen Him, or to have penetrated 
to His presence. 

" We have not seen Him (God)," writes Impera- 
tor, " nor do we hope yet to approach His presence. 
Millions of ages, as you count time, must run their 
course, and be succeeded by yet again myriads up- 
on myriads, ere the perfected spirit — perfected 
through suffering and experience — can enter into 
the inner sanctuary to dwell in the presence of the 
All-pure, All-holy, All-perfect God." 

Many modern spiritists, of course, have retained 
the belief of their earlier days and acknowledge the 
One Personal God, the Creator and Sustainer of 
all things, Who has from time to time disclosed 
truth to man as man has been able to bear it and 
in proportion as he has fitted himself for its recep- 
tion — Who is, in these present days, continually 
disclosing it by His spirit-messengers. But, speak- 
ing generally, the views of spiritists on this subject 
differ as widely as can well be conceived, and almost 
any view, from the most extreme form of panthe- 
ism on the one side to the belief of the educated 
unitarian on the other, find a place and acceptance 
in the spiritistic system. 

Agreement can be said to exist on one point only, 



220 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

namely, that the historic Christian doctrine respect- 
ing the nature and character of the Deity, is an im- 
position, the fabric of an artificial scholastic philos- 
ophy, and contradicted by sound reason as well as 
by the unanimous testimony of the spirit-world. 

It is certainly a remarkable fact that on this point 
the higher intelligences are strangely unanimous 
and emphatic in their statements, and all spiritual- 
ists are agreed. 

"When you rashly complain of us," writes Im- 
perator, " that our teaching to you controverts that 
of the Old Testament, we can but answer that it 
does indeed controvert that old and repulsive view of 
the good God, which made Him an angry, jealous, 
human tyrant; but that it is in fullest accord with 
that divinely inspired revelation of Himself which 
He gave through Jesus Christ — a revelation which 
man has done so much to debase, and from which 
the best of the followers of Christ have so grievously 
fallen away. ... , 

" Your sacred records tell you how, at the sepul- 
chre of Jesus, the angel message to the sorrowing 
friend was one of aspiration. * Why seek ye the 
living among the dead? He is not here, He is 
risen/ So, friend, we say to you. Why linger in 
the dead past, the sepulchre of buried truth, seeking, 
in fruitless sorrow, for that which is no longer 
there? It is not there, it is risen. It has left the 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 221 

body of dogmatic teaching, which once for a rest- 
less age enshrined Divine Truth. There remains 
but the dead casket, the jewel is gone. The spirit 
has risen, and lo ! we proclaim to you sublime truth, 
a nobler creed and a Divine God. We proclaim to 
you a spiritualised religion, we call you from the 
dead formalism, the lifeless, loveless liberalism of 
the past, to a religion of spiritualised truth, to the 
lovely symbolism of angel teaching, to the higher 
planes of spirit, where the material finds no place 
and the formal dogmatism of the past is forever 
gone." 

" Our modern religious teachers maintain," writes 
Professor A. R. Wallace, " that they know a great 
deal about God. They define minutely and criti- 
cally His various attributes ; they enter into His mo- 
tives, His feelings, and His opinions; they explain 
exactly what He has done and why He has done it, 
and they declare that after death we shall be with 
Him and shall see and know Him. 

" In the teaching of the spirits there is not a word 
of all this. They tell us that they commune with 
higher intelligences than themselves, but of God 
they really know no more than we do. They say 
that above these higher intelligences are others 
higher and higher, in apparently endless gradation, 
but so far as they know, no absolute knowledge of 
the Deity Himself is claimed by any of them." 



222 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

Regarding man and his origin there is a similar 
diversity of view amongst spiritists. A consider- 
able proportion of them have a leaning towards 
theosophical teaching and accept the theosophical 
doctrine of reincarnation. They believe that each 
human soul which appears upon the earth, had a 
pre-existence in the spirit-spheres and has passed 
through previous earth-lives, bringing with it some 
fragments of recollection of those lives, revived 
sometimes in abnormal mind or dream states, and 
in those conditions of mental passivity which are 
induced by hypnotic and other occult practices. 

In France this view is the predominating one, 
French spiritism being largely founded upon the 
communication received through the mediumship 
of Allan Kardec, himself a reincarnationist. In 
England, America, and Germany the spirits, gen- 
erally speaking, either deny reincarnation or de- 
clare that it is a subject on which they have and 
can have no definite and accurate knowledge. 

But whether reincarnation be accepted or not, 
spiritists teach that each individual man, as he ap- 
pears upon this earth is, in the truest sense, an in- 
carnation, the spirit or ego originating in the spirit- 
world, the body an organism by long processes of 
development prepared for its ultimate high purpose. 

Spiritists, therefore, while thorough believers in 
the general doctrine of development, are by no 
means extreme evolutionists. On the contrary, they 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 223 

maintain that no degree or process of organic de- 
velopment could by any possible chance have pro- 
duced thought and spirit and consciousness, and 
that the origin of the human ego, of the true con- 
scious and reasoning self must, in any case, be 
sought for in the spirit-world, amidst spiritual and 
incorporeal conditions. It is by its temporary asso- 
ciation and blending with a frail earthly body that 
its training and education are effected and that its 
ultimate destiny is worked out. 

Thus man is conceived of as standing between 
two worlds and two states of being: linked on the 
one hand with the world of spirit, with all that is 
good, and true, and noble, and elevating; on the 
other with the world of matter, with the vile, the 
low, the earthly, and the debasing. Gifted with 
free will, he has to make his choice, has to deter- 
mine for himself which way he will walk, to which 
set of conditions and environments he will conform 
and adapt himself. 

There is the world of spirit offering him its best 
and highest, its most satisfying and enduring treas- 
ures. It is in constant operation upon his better 
nature, reminding him of his true origin and his 
high destiny, of the happiness and satisfaction to be 
found in cultivating the soul's life, in seeking com- 
munion with and instruction from the spirit-world, 
and in thus gradually fitting himself for life in the 
highest spirit-spheres hereafter. 



224 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

A host of spiritual beings, many of whom have, 
like himself, passed through the process of earth 
purification, and who are, by reason of certain sim- 
ilarities of temperament and disposition, in rapport 
or affinity with him, attend him and watch over his 
every step. They do not interfere with his free will 
and choice, but they suggest good and pure 
thoughts; they strengthen each upward impulse, 
each earnest effort, each deliberate determination 
to resist the lower tendencies and to obey the higher. 
They are able and anxious to come in more direct 
touch with him, if he will give the necessary oppor- 
tunities, if he will cultivate or rather allow them 
to cultivate, certain powers and possibilities latent 
in him, if he will trustfully submit himself to their 
influence and ruling. They will, by visible tangible 
signs and tokens, give him proof and evidence that 
they are living, independent beings, and they will, 
in the course of time, bring him in touch with and 
open his mind to the secrets of the spirit-spheres 
and the spirit-life. 

There is, on the other hand, the world of matter, 
of the lower earthly influences, touching the other 
side of his nature and of his being. This world, be- 
ing intimately linked with the life of the body and 
of the senses, is the stronger one of the two. Its 
claims are incessant and imperative and, by reason 
of the constitution of our human nature, much more 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 225 

readily obeyed than those of the higher order. 
There are the appetites and lusts and passions in- 
herent in and dominating the flesh, powerfully and 
unceasingly exercising their fatal spells and fascina- 
tions. There are the allurements and temptations 
of the world without: its distinctions and honours 
and possessions. 

There is the world of spiritual evil, of low spirit- 
intelligences linked with this world of matter, and 
operating upon it by means of these natural tend- 
encies and dispositions, intensifying them if possi- 
ble, and getting in on the very current of our life 
and of our being. And the law determining human 
relationship with this lower world of spirit is that 
of correspondence or affinity — of similarity of taste 
and temperament and aim and disposition. 

Thus, according to the teaching of the spirits, the 
sensualist or profligate, wholly obeying the lower 
instincts of his nature, will not only estrange from 
himself and from his soul's life the higher intelli- 
gences who cannot penetrate into the unfavourable 
moral sphere environing him and created by him, 
but he will attract to himself intelligences of a like 
sensual order, whose passions have survived the 
decease of the body and who, forevermore in 
search for opportunities of gratifying them, will at- 
tach themselves to him, and will endeavour to par- 
ticipate in his delights. They will exercise their in- 
fluence by fanning his passions and by stimulating 



226 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

his cravings, and by rilling his mind with pictures 
and images leading to fresh indulgences and de- 
baucheries. They will, in the course of time, be- 
come his constant attendants and companions, in 
many instances reducing him to the position of a 
mere tool and bond-slave. 

The higher intelligences, unable to enter the at- 
mosphere of evil thus created, and to sufficiently 
impress the mind of the victim with the thought of 
better things and of the evils and folly of such a 
course, will be compelled, after a while, to withdraw 
from such a soul, and to leave it, however reluc- 
tantly, to its own misery and destiny. 

In the same way, all human passions and earth- 
ward tendencies, such as anger and malice and envy, 
the lust for money or for power or worldly pos- 
session, for mere intellectual attainments and 
achievements, have, it is declared, their counterpart 
in the spirit-spheres, provoking the operation of be- 
ings of a like order and disposition, and placing the 
person, enslaved by such propensities, in corre- 
spondence and affinity with them. As in the higher 
so in this lower world of spiritual forces and in- 
fluences, the law of order and of harmony reigns, 
and it is by the unerring action of that law that man 
is silently and gradually, but nevertheless effectually 
and surely, shaping his life and determining his des- 
tiny. He is fitting himself by " adaptation to envi- 
ronment " either for a progressive existence in the 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 227 

higher spirit-spheres, for the companionship of and 
intercourse with the high, the good, the true and 
the pure, or he is certainly and constantly tending 
downwards, daily and hourly becoming more and 
more "unfit," and preparing for himself a future 
of unceasing regrets, disappointment, and suffering. 

" The spirit," writes Professor Wallace, " which 
has lived and developed its powers clothed with a 
human body, will, when it leaves that body, still 
retain its former modes of thought, its former tastes, 
feelings, and affections. The new state of existence 
is a natural continuation of the old one. There is 
no sudden acquisition of new mental proclivities, 
no revolution of the moral nature. Just what the 
embodied spirit had made itself, or had become, that 
is the embodied spirit when it begins its life under 
new conditions. It is the same in character as be- 
fore, but it has acquired new physical and mental 
powers, new modes of manifesting the moral senti- 
ment, wider capacity for acquiring physical and 
spiritual knowledge." 1 

" As the soul," writes Imperator, " lives in the 
earth-life, so does it go to the spirit-life. Its tastes, 
its predilections, its habits, its antipathies, they are 
with it still. It is not changed save in the accident 
of being freed from the body. The soul that on 
earth has been low in tastes and impure in habit, 

1 p. 109. 



228 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

does not change its nature by passing from the 
earth-sphere, any more than the soul that has been 
truthful, pure, and progressive, becomes base and 
bad by death. Wonderful that you do not recog- 
nise this truth ! You would not fancy a pure and 
upright soul degenerating after it has passed from 
your gaze. Yet you fable a purification of that 
which has become by habit impure and unholy, hat- 
ing God and goodness, and choosing sensuality and 
sin. The one is no more possible than the other. 
The soul's character has been a daily, hourly 
growth. It has not been an overlaying of the soul 
with that which can be thrown off". Rather it has 
been a weaving into the nature of the spirit that 
which becomes part of itself, identified with its na- 
ture, inseparable from its character. It is no more 
possible that that character should be undone, save 
by the slow process of obliteration, than that the 
woven fabric should be rudely cut and the threads 
remain intact. Nay more. The soul has cultivated 
habits that have become so ingrained as to be es- 
sential parts of its individuality. The spirit that 
has yielded to the lusts of a sensual body becomes 
in the end their slave. It would not be happy in 
the midst of purity and refinement. It would sigh 
for its old haunts and habits. They are of its es- 
sence. So you see that the legions of the adver- 
saries are simply the masses of unprogressed, unde- 
veloped spirits, who have banded together from 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 229 

affinity against all that is pure and good. They can 
only progress by penitence, through the instruction 
of higher intelligences, and by gradual and laborious 
undoing of sin and sinful habit. . . ." 

We have here, it is asserted by spiritists, the true 
explanation of the undeniable circumstance that by 
far the larger proportion of spiritistic phenomena 
are of a trivial order, and that the intelligences ex- 
hibiting them would seem to be of a low moral and 
intellectual character. These intelligences repre- 
sent, they say, that preponderating class of trivial 
and " undeveloped " human beings who are daily 
passing over into the spirit-world, and who are be- 
ing drawn back into those conditions and environ- 
ments with which they are in correspondence and 
affinity. It is not really so much with them that the 
fault lies, but rather with those thoughtless investi- 
gators who, from mere motives of curiosity and ex- 
citement, and without any knowledge of the laws 
regulating intercourse with the spirit-world, will 
venture upon these — for them — more than peril- 
ous experiments. How far the actual facts of the 
case can be said to bear out the truth of this asser- 
tion will have been seen from other portions of this 
work. 

The state of the human spirit in the other world, 
then, while in large measure self-created and self- 



2 3 o THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

induced, is, according to the spirit-creed, in no sense 
a fixed and permanent one. On the contrary, it is 
one of unceasing education and of possible adapta- 
tion to new conditions and environments. For the 
most debased and sin-fettered spirit, progress and 
advancement become possible the moment that he 
realises the extent of his loss and of his misery, and 
that there rises up within him the desire to repent 
and, so far as that may be possible, to undo the 
past. Such repentance may not, in the new incor- 
poreal condition, be such an easy and simple thing 
as it was in the life of the body ; there may be keen 
and long-continued suffering to be gone through ; it 
may be a hard and painful thing for the enslaved 
spirit to initiate within himself thoughts of and de- 
sires for better things; but the change begins the 
moment such thoughts begin to take shape and to 
manifest themselves. Higher intelligences begin to 
draw near; they surround the spirit with pure and 
helpful influences going to confirm and strengthen 
the new impulse. They point out the difficulty, but 
at the same time, the happiness of such upward 
striving ; they constitute themselves his teachers and 
ministers, and after a while, if the work of repent- 
ance be genuine and sincere, they bear him away to 
advanced spheres, and to happier and more helpful 
conditions of life and environment. 

" When the desire arises," writes Imperator, " the 
spirit makes its first step. It becomes amenable to 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 231 

holy and ennobling influence, and is tended by those 
pure and self-sacrificing spirits whose mission it is 
to tend such souls. You have among you spirits 
bright and noble, whose mission in the earth-life is 
among the dens of infamy and haunts of vice, and 
who are preparing for themselves a crown of glory, 
whose brightest jewels are self-sacrifice and love. 1 
So amongst us there are spirits who give themselves 
to work in the sphere of the degraded and aban- 
doned. By their efforts many spirits rise, and when 
rescued from degradation, work out long and labori- 
ous purification in the probation spheres, where they 
are removed from influences of evil and entrusted 
to the care of the pure and good. So desire for 
holiness is encouraged and the spirit is puri- 
fied. ... 

"Of punishment we know indeed, but it is not 
the vindictive lash of an angry God, but the natural 
outcome of conscious sin, remediable by repentance 
and atonement and reparation, personally wrought 
out in pain and shame, not by coward cries for 
mercy, and by feigned assent to statements which 
ought to create a shudder." 

1 " Spirits of the higher spheres can and do sometimes com- 
municate with those below, but those latter cannot at will 
with those above. But there is for all an eternal progress, 
a progress solely dependent on the power of will in the de- 
velopment of spirit nature. There are no evil spirits but the 
spirits of bad men, and even the worst are surely if slowly 
progressing" (A. R. Wallace). 



22,2 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

Thus the modern spirit-creed, thoroughly accept- 
ing the general doctrine of evolution, of the slow 
and laborious ascent of life, uncompromisingly re- 
jects the doctrine of the Fall of Man in the sense 
in which Christianity in all times and ages has re- 
ceived and taught it. Man, the spiritist teaches, has 
not lapsed from a state of supernatural grace, of 
spiritual knowledge and insight, from the life of in- 
timate union and fellowship with his Creator; but 
he is slowly and painfully ascending out of low and 
earthly conditions and tendencies to some such high 
goal and destiny, and what there is in him of evil 
and of wickedness is not the result of wilful rebel- 
lion against the known will and law of the Eternal 
Cause, but the inevitable consequence of ignorance 
and blindness, of the love and pursuit of the animal 
and physical rather than of the heavenly and spirit- 
ual. And the pain and suffering which this process 
of progressive evolution involves are not to be re- 
garded as penalties inflicted for the transgression of 
known laws, but as the effective instruments of edu- 
cation and enlightenment, as the means of purify- 
ing the human spirit from earthly and debasing 
tendencies and of leading him to know himself and 
the true end and purpose of his life. Suffering 
ceases in proportion as the soul emancipates itself 
from the bondage of the lower conditions and ad- 
vances to the higher, and there is no offended God 
to be reconciled, no mysterious sin-offering to be 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 233 

made, but a higher law to be discovered and to be 
obeyed, a truer knowledge of self and of the uni- 
verse to be attained — adaptation to higher condi- 
tions and environments to be striven for and to be 
aimed at. 

, Repentance and sorrow for sin, both here and 
hereafter are, for the spiritist too, desirable and nec- 
essary conditions of mind and of soul; but they 
have reference to the human side of things only. It 
is the repentance consequent upon the consciousness 
of wasted time and opportunities, of the process of 
soul-education rendered unnecessarily painful and 
protracted and laborious — it is the sorrow for sin 
following upon an experience of the painful conse- 
quences attending it. 

While thus a semblance of the historic doctrine 
of the Fall is retained and taught by the spiritist, 
and the earthward tendencies of the human heart 
and the laboriousness of the upward process are con- 
stantly insisted upon, the very essence and principle 
of the doctrine — the deliberate transgression of the 
known Divine law and the fatal consequence result- 
ing therefrom — are denied or interpreted away as 
the invention of the infant human mind based upon 
primitive and unreliable traditions, or as the equally 
unreliable traditions of a mystical and speculative 
theology. 

" For the present you may know," wrote the 

"higher spirits" through the hand of Mr. Stain- 
16 



234 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

ton-Moses, " that the theological story of a fall from 
a state of purity to a state of sin, as usually detailed 
and accepted, is misleading." 

It will be seen that in such a system of progres- 
sive educational evolution there can be no real place 
for the Christian scheme of Redemption with its 
doctrines of human rebellion against recognised Di- 
vine authority, of atonement for sin made by the 
God-man, of restoration to the favour of God and 
eternal salvation for those consciously and peni- 
tently, and on the terms disclosed by Almighty God, 
participating in the benefits of that Atonement. 
There can be no room in it for the supernatural 
truths of Revelation and the historic creed of Chris- 
tendom. It is only those fragments of Christian 
teaching which remain when these truths have been 
got rid of, and which can be fitted in with the spirit- 
creed, for which a Divine origin is claimed and to 
which anything like a Divine authority is ascribed. 
The rest is looked upon as the after-thought of 
theology, as mere accretions which, by the processes 
of human thought and speculation, and by the tend- 
ency of the human mind to mystify itself and to 
pervert things, have, in the course of ages, come to 
adhere to the simple truths disclosed by Christ — 
the great Medium and Seer — and which have been 
so instrumental in hiding God's light from the world 
and in hindering its true progress and advancement. 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 235 

It is the mission of the higher spirit-intelligences, 
now so increasingly communicating with persons 
ready and fitted to receive their communications, to 
once more proclaim these simple truths, to free the 
human mind from the bondage of man-made creeds 
and theologies, and to supply such supplementary 
teaching as enlightened individuals here and there, 
in advance of their time and generation, may be 
urgently calling for. 

" The time," said the spirits to Mr. Stainton- 
Moses, " is far nearer than you think, when the old 
faith which has worn so long, and which man has 
patched so clumsily, will be replaced by a higher and 
nobler one — one not antagonistic but supplemen- 
tary — and the pure gospel which Jesus preached 
shall find its counterpart again on an advanced plane 
of knowledge. . . . Even as He, the Lamb of 
God, the Saviour of men, rescued Divine truth from 
Jewish ignorance and superstition, so do we rescue 
Divine verities from the crushing weight of man's 
theology. . . . 

" The Christ-idea, the spiritual truth that He pro- 
claimed is dragging out a lingering life choked by 

the weeds of sacerdotalism and human theology. 
» 1 

x The spirits insist that this mission of illumination is to 
advanced and enlightened souls only, to persons who are 
chafing under, and who have "outgrown" the bondage of 
creeds, and who are thoroughly prepared to receive a higher 



236 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

As to the doctrine of the Atonement, the spirits 
are exceptionally clear and emphatic, and respecting 
it the modern spiritist entertains the most pro- 
nounced and uncompromising views. The entire 
conception of the shedding of blood and of the sur- 
render of life as a means of reconciliation between 
God and man is a notion abhorrent to the spirit- 
world — a doctrine declared to have its origin in 
heathen rites and superstitions, and to have been im- 
ported into the Christian system from those impure 
sources. Spiritists maintain that it is to the later 
theological and philosophical speculations, and to 
some fragments of those earlier beliefs inherent in 
us, not to the words of Christ Himself, that the 
formulation of this repulsive doctrine is to be 
ascribed. 

" Little," say the spirits, " do men grasp the sig- 
nificance of the truth to which they carelessly give 
utterance when they say that Christ came into the 
world to die for it. He did so come; but in the 

and purer truth. They point out that the forcing of such 
truth on unprepared minds not only causes violence to be 
done to truth itself, but harm great and far-reaching to 
those not really capable of assimilating it. 

" There are many," they say, " to whom the gospel given 
of old is satisfying yet, and who are not receptive of further 
truth. With these we meddle not. But many there are who 
have learned what the past can teach, and who are thirsting 
for further knowledge. To these it is given in such measure 
as the Most High sees fit," etc. 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 237 

sense of these enthusiasts He came not. The drama 
of Calvary was of man's, not God's devising." 

" It was not the eternal purpose of God that Jesus 
should die when the work of the Christ was but just 
commencing. That was man's work, foul, evil, ac- 
cursed. Christ came to die for and to save man in 
the same, though in a higher sense, that all regener- 
ators of men have been their saviours, and yielded 
up bodily existence in devotion to an overmastering 
idea. In this sense He came to save and die for 
men ; but in the sense that the scene on Calvary was 
preordained to occur when man consummated his 
foul deed, He came not. And this is a mighty 
truth." 

" The spirit-creed does not recognise any need of 
propitiation towards this God. It rejects as false 
any notion of the Divine Being vindictively punish- 
ing a transgressor or requiring a vicarious sacrifice 
for sin," etc. 

" The idea of a good God," * wrote Mr. Stainton- 
Moses, " sacrificing His sinless Son as a propitia- 
tion for man is repudiated as monstrous. Equally 
strong is the rejection of the notion of a store of 
merit laid up by the death of this incarnate God, 
on which the vilest reprobate may draw at his death, 
and gain access to the society of God and the per- 
fected. In place of this it is said that man can have 
no saviour outside of himself; that no second per- 

1 Higher Aspects of Spiritualism, p. 104. 



238 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

son can relieve him from the consequences of the 
conscious transgression of known laws; that no 
transference of merit can wipe out in a moment a 
state which is the result of a lifetime's work, nor 
counterbalance that which is indelible, save by slow 
process of obliteration, even as it was built up ; that 
man stands alone in his responsibility for his deeds, 
and must work out his own salvation and atone for 
his own sin." 

According to the belief of the modern spiritist, 
then, man is his own saviour in the literal sense and 
meaning of that term, and it is to no other saviour, 
human or divine, that he must look for help and 
deliverance. For him the Christian teaching about 
the Person of Christ is the invention of theologians, 
and has no real foundation in the Sacred Writings. 

" If you will read the records," writes Imperator, 
" which so imperfectly record the earth-life of Jesus, 
you will not find that He claimed for Himself any 
such position as the Christian Church has since 
forced upon Him. He was more such as we preach 
Him than such as the Church called by His name 
has made Him. 

" No doubt it was a current belief, at the time 
when many of the writers of books in the Bible com- 
posed the treatises which you call inspired, that Jesus 
was God, and harsh denunciations are made against 
any who should deny the dogma. No doubt also 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 239 

that the same men believed also that He would, in 
mysterious manner, return in the clouds to judge 
the world, and that before their generation should 
die. They were mistaken in both beliefs, and over 
one at least more than 1,800 years have rolled and 
still the return is unaccomplished. So we might 
push the argument were it necessary." 

Thus to the spiritist the Divine Son of God be- 
comes a mere seer or prophet or medium, a spirit 
of an exalted order and of superior intelligence, 
Who, being in rapport with the highest spheres of 
knowledge and of wisdom, was in a position to 
impart truths far in advance of His age and gen- 
eration. And, being Himself possessed of the key 
to many of the deeper secrets of nature, He was able 
to work real miracles — to heal the leper, to restore 
sight to the blind, and, in exceptional instances, to 
raise even the dead to life again. He had power, 
too, over the material forces of the universe. But 
it was not by reason of His inherent Divine Nature, 
of His oneness with the Father, in the sense of the 
Christian Creed, that these things were effected, not 
because He possessed the attributes and exercised 
the power of Deity, but because He had, in the spirit- 
spheres, attained to an exceptional insight into mat- 
ters, had learned how to manipulate and control the 
natural forces, and was Himself possessed of a bod- 
ily organisation so subtle and refined that He was 



24 o THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

able to operate as a true medium between the sphere 
of spirit and that of matter. 

" In the case of most incarnate spirits," writes 
Mr. Stainton-Moses' controls, " who have de- 
scended to minister on earth, the assumption of cor- 
poreity dims spiritual vision and cuts it off from 
remembrance of its previous existence. Not so 
with him. So little did his ethereal body blind the 
sense of spirit that he could converse with the an- 
gels as one of their own order, who was cognisant 
of their life, and remembered his own part in it be- 
fore incarnation. 

" His remembrance of previous life was never 
blunted, and a great part of his time was spent in 
disunion from the body and in conscious commu- 
nion with spirit. Long trances, as you call the inte- 
rior state, fitted him for this, as you may see in some 
distorted passages of your records — the supposed 
Temptation, for instance, or that which speaks of 
his habit of meditating and praying alone on the 
mountain-top, or in the Garden Agony. . . . 

" His life, but little hampered by the body — 
which, indeed, was but a temporary envelope to his 
spirit, assumed only when it was necessary for the 
spirit to come in contact with material things — 
was different in degree, though not in kind, from 
the ordinary life of man — purer, simpler, nobler, 
more loving, and more loved. Such a life could 
never be understood aright by those who were con- 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 241 

temporary with it. It is of necessity that such lives 
should be misunderstood, misinterpreted, maligned, 
and mistaken. It is so in a degre with all that step 
out from the ranks, but especially with him." 

And what Jesus did and effected during His 
earthly life is, it is asserted, but a type of what can 
in large measure be effected by all those possessed 
of similar transcendental powers, and diligently ap- 
plying themselves to the development and cultiva- 
tion of those powers. The difference between Him 
and them is one of degree, not of kind. Some of 
the miracles which He worked have, it is claimed, 
been worked by other highly developed mediums be- 
fore and since His time, and they may, even though 
in a more modest degree, be exhibited in any suc- 
cessful seance of the present day. And even His 
resurrection from the grave can be shown to be on 
a line with those spirit-materialisations which con- 
stantly occur in the presence of good sensitives, and 
the objectivity and reality of which the camera has 
so effectively and conclusively demonstrated. 

It is by such a method of reasoning, by such 
modes of establishing identity between Jesus of Naz- 
areth and the modern spirit-medium, that the con- 
ception of the Christ, the Saviour of the world, 
vanishes away, and that an exalted but purely hu- 
man personality, prophet, seer, medium, mahatma, 



242 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

or whatever other designation the individual oc- 
cultist may adopt, takes His place. 

" We would have you know," writes Imperator, 
"that the spiritual ideal of Jesus the Christ is no 
more like the human notion, with its accessories of 
Atonement and Redemption, as men have grasped 
them, than was the calf ignorantly carved by the 
ancient Hebrews like the God who strove to reveal 
Himself to them. ,, 

" It is when we come to deal with the central 
figure in the Gospel story,' ' writes Mr. Stainton- 
Moses, 1 " that the divergence (between the old 
orthodox view and the new spiritistic one) becomes 
most marked. The mysteriously incarnated God 
shades away into the divinest type of human nature. 
The being like nothing man can reach — so infi- 
nitely high and lifted up above human nature — 
gives place to the very man, the highest realisation 
of man's possible; the actual living model which 
man may place before him for daily imitation. The 
God who lived amongst men gives place to the man 
who lived nearest God. We have lost a God-made 
man, but we have gained a model man, all but 
Divine. The loss is in the humanised God, the gain 
is in the God-like man." 

Why this same extraordinary medium, appearing 
1 Higher Aspects, 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 243 

in a benighted world, keenly anxious to be certain 
of a life beyond the grave, and Himself knowing the 
secret of spirit-intercourse and the best means of 
obtaining this much-desired knowledge, did not say 
a single word on the subject, did not leave a single 
instruction as to how a seance may safely and ef- 
fectively be held, how we may best put ourselves in 
sensible communication with the departed dead, and 
how we may most successfully guard against those 
grave moral and physical perils constantly attend- 
ing this intercourse, spiritists do not explain, and 
spiritistic literature does not record. And yet all 
right-minded men must feel that if this view of the 
nature of Christ's Person and of the aim and pur- 
pose of His coming, be the true one, we might rea- 
sonably look for some such instruction, and in any 
case expect the statements of the New Testament 
and of the early Christian records to be somewhat 
different from what they actually are. It must 
surely be clear to the simplest understanding that 
the spirit-intercourse there spoken of is far other 
than that which has its source in the modern seance 
room, and which is brought about by mediumistic 
agency and by the abnormal physical and constitu- 
tional conditions of sensitives. 

It may here be objected that there are some spir- 
itists whose writings would seem to express belief 
in the divinity of Christ, and who have not appar- 



244 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

ently broken away from the historic creed of Chris- 
tendom. This is undoubtedly the case, and the 
writer has himseif come in personal contact with 
such persons. But he has invariably found that 
spiritists occupying this position either hold the 
spiritistic creed in a very loose and modified form, 
and do not in any marked way identify themselves 
with the modern cult, or that they put upon the 
Christian creed that modern and " liberal " inter- 
pretation, which at this present time is doing so 
much to undermine belief in the true supernatural, 
and which, as all accurate thinkers know, is virtu- 
ally a denial of it. They are Christians in a new 
and quite modern acceptation of the term, and in 
most instances repudiate the very fundamental doc- 
trines upon which the Christian system reposes. 

And the spirits themselves, ever ready to accom- 
modate themselves to the current tendencies of 
thought, and to undermine the old ideas " by loos- 
ening the ropes gradually, and one by one," as " Im- 
perator " once said to Stainton-Moses, will at times 
speak in terms implying belief in the historic creed 
of Christianity. This is, however, a mere ruse on 
their part, very apt to mislead the inexperienced 
and uninitiated, but scarcely likely to deceive those 
who, from intimate knowledge of their methods, 
have come to entertain doubts as to the orthodoxy 
of the spirits, and who formulate their questions 
accordingly. 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 245 

Thus the writer on one occasion elicited the fol- 
lowing answers to questions addressed to spirits 
who were triumphantly asserted to have expressed 
their belief in the divinity of Christ : — 

Q. What do you teach concerning the person of 
Jesus Christ? 

A. We believe as you believe, and we endeavour 
to obey and follow His teaching. 

Q. Do you believe in and teach His divinity — 
that He is the Son of God? 

A. We thoroughly believe this. We are all the 
sons of God, and there is in all men a spark of the 
Divine. 

Q. But is He the Son of God in a unique and 
special sense, of one substance with God, and in this 
sense altogether different from man in nature and 
in origin? 

A. We have no such belief. 

Q. Do you hold and teach the doctrine of the 
incarnation as it is contained in the New Testa- 
ment? 

A. Yes, certainly. Each human soul imprisoned 
in a human body is an incarnation in the truest 
sense. 

Q. But do you hold and teach that Christ's incar- 
nation was a unique and distinctive manifestation of 
God, effected with a unique aim and purpose for the 
redemption and salvation of man, and for his res- 
toration to the favour of God? 



246 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

A. We have no such belief. 

Q. Have you seen Christ since your departure 
from the body? 

A. No, we have not seen Him because we are not 
in His sphere. But we have heard of those who 
have beheld Him, and who have benefited by His 
teaching. 

It will be seen from this how very easy it is for 
the inexperienced and incautious to be misled by 
spirit communications of this character, and to place 
upon them interpretations which they are certainly 
not intended to bear. The spirits are in the habit 
of using a general and equivocal phraseology 
adapted to the peculiar mental tendencies of the 
particular circle in which they communicate, and to 
steer a course which enables them to sail very near 
the truth, so that sometimes the suspicions of the 
most wary of inquirers are apt to be lulled to sleep. 
It is only a searching and painstaking examination 
and insistence upon exact statements and upon the 
use of an accurate phraseology, that are likely to 
elicit the truth and to disclose the real character of 
their teaching. 

The appearance, at spirit seances, of the " mate- 
rialised " Christ, has from time to time been re- 
corded, and it need hardly be said that the phantom 
is reported to have invariably confirmed the teaching 
of modern spiritism, and to have urged a fuller and 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 247 

bolder proclamation of its truths. The writer has 
not, however, come across an instance in which a 
personal and authentic account could be obtained of 
the occurrence. 

As regards the existence and personality of satan, 
so clearly taught by Christ, the spirits counselled 
Mr. Stainton-Moses " to cease to be perplexed by 
thoughts of an imagined devil. For the honest and 
truth-seeking soul," they said, " there is no devil 
nor prince of evil such as theology has feigned," 
and to his direct question as to whether the unde- 
veloped spirits so frequently communicating at se- 
ances had any chief, the reply was : " Chiefs many 
who govern, but no such devil as theologians have 
feigned. Spirits, good and bad, are subject to the 
rule of commanding intelligences. " 

On the subject of the resurrection of Christ a di- 
versity of views are entertained amongst spiritists, 
unanimity of mind existing only in their repudia- 
tion of the historic doctrine. Some teach that the 
body of Christ had, by suffering and ascetic exer- 
cises, attained such a high degree of subtleness and 
refinement that it had practically become independ- 
ent of the laws of matter, and could already here 
move and operate after the fashion of a spirit. It 
was not surprising, therefore, it is urged, that a 
body so lightly and loosely put together and contain- 



248 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

ing so little material subject to corruption, should 
dissolve and disintegrate upon withdrawal of the 
life principle, and that its delicate component parts 
should be readily absorbed by the air, or ether, or 
astral forces, which had contributed towards its con- 
struction. 

Other spiritists favour the notion that the phys- 
ical body was in some way disposed of by the dis- 
ciples, and that it was the astral or spirit body of 
Jesus which, both before and after His death, oper- 
ated under certain conditions and apart from the 
natural body, and that it was this body that was 
seen by the disciples. 

The modern spirit-materialisations go, it is 
claimed, to throw considerable light upon this sub- 
ject, and there is every probability that the form 
in which Jesus appeared after His death was of the 
kind and quality, and possessed of the same powers, 
as the spirit-bodies evolved through the agency of 
a good materialising medium. The writer has 
heard it asserted in spiritistic circles that there is at 
least in one instance some evidence of such a mate- 
rialisation having taken place, the medium (uncon- 
sciously, of course), on that occasion having in all 
probability been the gardener (see St. John xx). 
It is to the circumstance that materialised spirits, on 
their first manifestation, invariably bear a strong 
likeness to the medium from whose body the psy- 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 249 

chic substance is withdrawn, that the mistake of St. 
Mary Magdalene is to be ascribed. 

And with the disappearance of these root prin- 
ciples of historical and primitive Christianity, the 
entire traditional conception of the Church as the 
Divine Society instituted by Christ to carry on His 
work to' the end of time and, by supernatural means 
and ordinances, exercised by a divinely ordained 
priesthood, to draw men into the supernatural sphere 
and to make them partakers of the Divine life, of 
necessity also vanishes away. Christ cannot and 
does not bestow and perpetuate what He does not 
really possess, and man cannot desire what is, in a 
true sense, already his own — inherent in his nature 
and part of his birthright, and requiring but to be 
developed and cultivated and to be called into active 
operation within himself. There is, strictly speak- 
ing, no heaven to be gained, no hell to be escaped, 
both being but subjective states or conditions of 
soul, incidental to its life of progressive education 
and evolution both here and hereafter. 

" We know of no hell," say the spirits, " save 
that within the soul ; a hell which is fed by the flame 
of unpurified lust and passion, which is kept alive 
by remorse and agony of sorrow, which is fraught 
with the pangs that spring unbidden from the re- 
sults of past misdeeds, and from which the only 

17 



250 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

escape lies in retracing the steps and in cultivating 
the qualities which shall bear fruit in love and 
knowledge of God." 

" Judgment," too, " is ceaseless, for the soul is 
ever fitting itself for its change. No such arraign- 
ment before the assembled universe as is in your 
mind. That is an allegory." 

" The burdens that a dogmatic priesthood has 
bound upon men's backs, we fling them to the winds ; 
the dogmas which have hampered the soul, and 
dragged down its aspirations, we tear them asunder 
and bid the soul go free. Our mission is the con- 
tinuation of that old teaching which man has so 
strangely altered ; its source identical, its course par- 
allel, its end the same." 

" The Christian Revelation, moreover, and the 
Catholic Creed present no fixed and unalterable 
truth. According to the spirit-creed, the revelation 
of God is progressive, bounded by no time, confined 
to no people. It has never ceased." 

From this brief examination of the teaching of 
modern spiritism, as it is presented to us in the 
most accredited and authoritative spiritistic litera- 
ture l and in the disclosures of spirit-intelligences 

1 " Spiritualism is an experimental science," writes Pro- 
fessor Wallace, "and affords the only sure foundation for a 
true philosophy and a pure religion. It abolishes the term 
* supernatural ' and ' miracle ' by an extension of the sphere 
of law and the realm of nature; and in doing so it takes 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 25 c 

of a superior order and of intellectual power, the 
following will now become clear. However di- 
verse this teaching may be on all matters of sec- 
ondary importance, there is absolute agreement and 
unanimity on these points : — 

1. That Christianity cannot be regarded as a rev- 
elation of a unique and specific character, foreshad- 
owed in the Jewish ordinances, foretold by prophet 
and seer, and completed and consummated on Cal- 
vary and on the day of Pentecost ; but that it is one 
of many forms of high spirit-manifestation designed 
to enforce upon man the binding obligations of the 
moral law inherent in his nature, and to remind him 
of the true character of his high origin and destiny. 

2. That Christ is not divine in the sense in which 
the Church throughout all ages has understood that 
term and has believed and taught Him to be divine. 
That He is, on the contrary, a human being like 
ourselves — at best perhaps a spirit of a high order 
and possessed of remarkable gifts and powers, Who, 
descending from the higher spheres and assuming a 
human body, was content to lay down His life as a 

up and explains whatever is true in the superstitions and 
so-called miracles of all ages. It, and it alone, is able to 
harmonise conflicting creeds; it must ultimately lead to con- 
cord among mankind in the matter of religion, which has 
for so many ages been the source of unceasing discord and 
incalculable evil; and it will be able to do this because it 
appeals to evidence instead of faith, and substitutes facts for 
opinions ; and is thus able to demonstrate the source of much 
of the teaching that men have so often held to be Divine." 



252 THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 

testimony to the truth of the doctrines which He 
taught. 

3. That the teaching of the Catholic Church re- 
specting His character and person and the aim and 
purpose of His death, is based upon a misconception, 
due to human error and weakness, and to subsequent 
philosophical thought and speculation. 

4. That there is no priesthood specially set apart 
and ordained by Christ with a view to perpetuating 
His work and to forming the link between the sphere 
of the human and the Divine. 

5. That the Church, with its sacramental institu- 
tions for the effectual carrying out of this work and 
for the raising of the human soul to a supernatural 
life, for the imparting to it of supernatural gifts and 
graces, is a vain thing fondly invented, and at best 
an institution of mere human origin and doing a 
purely human work. 

6. That the scriptural notion of retribution after 
death and of punishment for sin committed in the 
flesh is a misreading and misinterpretation of the 
words of Christ and of those feelings of failure and 
of loss which necessarily attend the slow process of 
human evolution, retribution only taking place in the 
sense that suffering must follow upon wrong, wil- 
fully or ignorantly done, in order that thus the way 
to right doing and to right conduct may be found. 

7. That man is daily and hourly, by his own deeds 
and misdeeds, and by the general moulding and 



THE SPIRITISTIC CREED 253 

shaping of his character, preparing for himself his 
own heaven or his own hell ; that these are, however, 
far other than those which theology holds and in- 
culcates. 

8. That physical death does not in any sense de- 
termine the destiny of the human spirit: but that, 
irrespective of personal beliefs or dis- or misbeliefs, 
its training and education are continued and indefi- 
nitely prolonged in the spirit-spheres. 

9. That man is in fact, in the truest sense of the 
word, his own saviour. 

Our examination, in short, of the teaching of 
modern spiritism, has clearly gone to show that, 
whatever else the spirit-creed may be, it is utterly 
and wholly incompatible with, and indeed manifestly 
antagonistic to, the teaching of Holy Scripture and 
to the traditional creed of Christendom. 



INDEX 

A 

PAGE 

Aksakov, Mr., on spirit-identity 156 

" on the spirit hypothesis 144 

Atonement, spirit-teaching on the doctrine of the 236 

Stainton-Moses on the doctrine of the 2,yj 

Automatic writing, physical effects of 70 

B 

Balfour, Right Hon. A. J., on attitude of science towards 

mesmerism 3 

Barrett, Prof. W. F., on psychic phenomena 10 

" on the character of the spirit-in- 
telligences 119 

" on the dangers of spiritistic prac- 
tices 193 

Bodies, movement of heavy, with contact, but without 

exertion 26 

Bramwell, Dr. Milne, on evidence for telepathy 97 

" on the subliminal mind theory.... 89 

C 

Christ, spirit-teaching on doctrine of redemption of 235 

" " Imperator " on divinity of 238, 242 

" spirit-messages on " " 245 

" spiritist views on resurrection of 247 

" Mr. Stainton-Moses on divinity of 242 

Christian Revelation, summary of spirit-teaching on 250 

Church, the, spirit-teaching on traditional conception of. . 249 

Contents, table of . . . . . vii 

Control of sensitives, conditions facilitating the... 168 

probable aim of spirit-intelligences 167 

Creed, the spiritistic . 214 

Crookes, Sir William, his classification of phenomena. ... 25 

on psychic phenomena 6 

255 



256 INDEX 

PAGE 

De Morgan, Mrs., on spirit-identity 149 

" Professor, his view of the phenomena 12 

Dialectical Society, report of, on psychical phenomena. . 5 

" Direct writing " 42 

Dixon, Mr. Hepworth, on spread of spiritism 178 

Du Prel, Dr., on spirit-hypnotism 177 

E 

Edmonds, Mr., on fascinations of spirit-intercourse 184 

" on the moral character of the intelli- 
gences . . 164 

Evidence, the, for objectivity of spiritistic phenomena. . 1 

importance of weighing value of the 21 

G 

God, Professor Wallace on spirit-teaching respecting 221 

" teaching of spirits respecting 218 

H 

Hatch, Dr. B. F., on the effects of spirit-intercourse.... 186 

Hell, spirit-teaching on doctrine of 249 

Hodgson, Dr., on " Phinuit " (Mrs. Piper's "control") 137 

on subliminal mind theory 103 

" on the spirit theory 17 

Home, Mr. D. D., his evidence before Dialectical Society 71 

levitation of 36 

Hudson, T. Jay, on the subliminal mind 90 

Hugunin, Henry M., on the effects of spirit-intercourse. . 184 
Hypnotic method, probable employment of by spirit-in- 
telligences 173 

Hyslop, Professor J. H., on the spiritistic theory 18 

" on the subliminal mind theory. 104 

I 

" Imperator " on conditions of spirit-life 230 

on divinity of Christ 238, 242 

on future state of man 227 

on the experimenting with Mrs. Piper's or- 
ganism 65 

on spirit-teaching 220 

Intelligence, extraneous, displayed in connection with 

phenomena 78 

or intelligences, the 86 

Intelligences, contradictory teaching of, an argument 

against the spiritistic theory 194 



INDEX 257 

PAGE 

James, Professor W., on phenomena obtained through 

Mrs. Piper jg 

Judgment, spirit-teaching on Christian doctrine of the.. . 250 

L 

Leaf, Dr. W., on " Imperator " 212 

on Mrs. Piper's " trance control " 136 

Levitation of human beings 36 

Lindsay, Lord, on levitation of Mr. Home $7 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, his personal belief 10 

on a probable partial manifestation 

only of spirit-intelligence 150 

Luminous appearances 39 

M 

Man, " Imperator " on future state of 227 

" Professor Wallace on future state of 227 

" spirit-teaching on Fall of 232 

on moral development of 222 

" " on origin of 222 

Materialisation of spirit-forms 46 

photographic evidence of 51, 66 

Sir William Crookes on 50 

Mediumship, general effects of exercise of 179 

Prentice Mulford on dangers of 178 

Mind-passivity, dangers of cultivation of 176 

Modus operandi employed in induction of spirit-phe- 
nomena 62 

Moral character of intelligences, an argument against the 

spiritistic theory .... 157 

" " Mr. Edmonds on 164 

" " Mr. Stainton-Moses on. 163 

Mrs. Sidgwick on 162 

their own admission .165, 166 

Movements of small articles without contact s7 

Myers, Mr. W. H. F., on evidence for independent spirit- 
action 78 

on the subliminal mind theory 89 

on what the phenomena prove 11 

N 

Newbold, Professor, on difficulty of establishing identity 

suggested by Stainton-Moses case 142 



258 INDEX 

P PAGE 

Perty, Professor, on spirit-identity 134 

Phantom forms and faces 45 

Phenomena of spiritism, description of 25 

subjective, probable method adopted for in- 
ducing . . . 173 

supposed cause of triviality of 229 

Philosophy, the spiritistic 214 

"Phinuit" (Mrs. Piper's "control"), characteristics of 135 

" " " Dr. Hodgson on. 137 

Dr. Leaf on 136 

Mrs. Sidgwickon 138 
Professor James 

on 139 

Photographs exhibiting evolution of " psychic force "... 66 

Piper, Mrs., her form of mediumship 135 

Preface v 

Priesthood, the Christian, spirit-teaching on 250 

Psychic force, development of 27 

in trance state 74 

Sir William Crookes on 7 

symptoms attending withdrawal of 68 

R 

Richet, Dr. Charles, on the conditions of certainty 13 

S 

Satan, spirit-teaching respecting existence of 247 

Sensitive, relation of, to the phenomena 62 

conditions affecting the 168 

control of the, a frequent aim of spirit-intelli- 
gences 167 

dangers to the, attending spiritistic experi- 
ments 84 

variations of weight of 67 

Sidgwick, Mrs., on " Phinuit " . 137 

Professor H., on psychic phenomena 11 

Sounds, phenomena of percussive and other allied 30 

" Spirit-controls," illustration of powers and faculties of 

(footnote) 129 

Spirit-creed, the 214 

" -identity, difficulty of establishing an argument 

against the spiritistic theory 127 

Dr. Van Eeden on 152 

Professor Perty on 134 

Mr. Aksakov on 156 



INDEX 259 

PAGE 

Spirit-identity, Mr. Stainton-Moses on 133 

-intelligences, their moral character. 157 

Mrs. Sidgwick on their moral char- 
acter 161, 162 

-intercourse, testimony as to consequences attend- 
ing 172 

-life, " Imperator " on the conditions of 230 

" Professor Wallace on the conditions of (foot- 
note) 231 

-lights, phenomenon of 39 

-religion, Professor Wallace on doctrines of new.. 216 

Spirit-teaching, contradictory character of 198, 203 

Dr. William Potter on contradictory char- 
acter of 199 

on the Divinity of Christ 241 

on the doctrine of the Atonement 236 

summary of, on the Christian Revelation 251 
-personation, an argument against the spiritistic 

theory 145 

Mr. Stainton-Moses on 146 

-photographs, Professor Wallace on 52 

Spiritistic claims, difficulties of accepting 209 

experiments, danger of, consequent upon im- 
perfect knowledge. 21 
why seemingly absent 

in some cases 72 

Dr. Forbes Winslow on conse- 
quences attending 85 

Cromwell Varley on physical ef- 
fects of 69 

phenomena indicating action of extraneous in- 
telligence 104 

practices, general effects of, an argument 

against the spiritistic theory.... 179 

H. H. Hugunin on effects of 184 

Dr. B. F. Hatch on effects of 186 

Dr. Forbes Winslow on effects of. 189 

private testimonies as to effects of. . 190 

Professor Barrett on dangers of . . . . 192 

" theory, the 115 

" its simplicity as an argument in its 

favour 121 

" its apparent explanation of phenomena 

as an argument in its favour 124 

" the, increasingly adopted by science.. 117 

Spiritualism, a revolutionary movement 195 



260 INDEX 

PAGE 

Spiritualism, Professor Wallace on its nature (footnote) 250 
Stainton-Moses, Mr., failure to establish identity of " con- 
trols " of .. 139 

" advice of spirits to 65 

" on agencies concerned in spiritual- 
ism 164 

" on difficulty of establishing identity 133 

" on moral character of intelligences 163 
" on physical effects of " automatic 

writing " 70 

" on revolutionary character of spirit- 
ualism 195 

" on spirit-personation 156 

Subjective phenomena 55 

experiences attending 81 

Subliminal mind, powers of the 101 

" theory, the 87 

evidence in favour of, in hyp- 
nosis 94 

Subliminal mind theory, how far accounting for phenom- 
ena 99 

inadequacy of 82, 104, 109 

moral difficulties attending no 

Professor Wallace on difficul- 
ties of 112 

Substances, movement of heavy, at distance from medium 

and without contact 34 

T 

Testimonies, private, as to effects of spiritistic practices. 189 

Trance-oratory, phenomenon of 58 

" -state, symptoms attending induction of 75 

V 

Van Eeden, Dr., extract from his paper read at Psycho- 
logical Congress, Paris, 1901 15 

" his experiment with Mrs. Thompson's 

" control " (footnote) 129 

" on difficulties of spiritistic theory 152 

" on perils of spiritistic inquiry 192 

Varley, Mr. Cromwell, on physical effects of spiritistic 

experiments 69 



INDEX 261 



w 

PAGE 

Wallace, Prof. A. R., his personal belief respecting phe- 
nomena 8 

" " on the belief of the uneducated... 3 

" on the conditions of spirit-life.... 231 
" on difficulties of subliminal mind 

theory 112 

on doctrines of new spirit-religion 216 

on materialisation 63 

on future state of the human spirit 227 

on spirit-photographs 52 

on spirit-teaching respecting God. 221 

on what spiritualism is 250 

Weight of bodies, alteration of 33 

Winslow, Dr. Forbes, on effects of spiritistic practices. . 188 



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